White House Draft Guidance on Climate Change and Environmental Impact Statements
The Council on Environmental Quality has issued a draft guidance to agencies on treatment of greenhouse gases. The key point is that emissions exceeding 25,000 tons per year of CO2 will be considered a "significant environmental impact" and require preparation of an environmental impact statement. Overall, of course, this is a huge step forward. One point that does deserve further attention is the discussion of land use. On a fairly quick read, I'm not clear on the ...
CONTINUE READINGYvo gives up, quits UNFCCC
In one more sign that making climate progress on the international front has become a difficult slog of late, UNFCCC Executive Secretary Yvo de Boer announced his surprise resignation today. NYT has the story here, and the UN statement is here. Speculation is that he was beaten down by the failure to reach a legally binding outcome in Copenhagen, as suggested in the NYT piece: Those who worked with Mr. de Boer were not completely surprised by his resignation. He w...
CONTINUE READINGThe Delta: pumps, politics, and (fish) populations
Cross-posted at CPRBlog The past couple of weeks have been crazier than usual on the Bay-Delta. The pumps were first ramped up and then ramped down. Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) pandered to the irrigation crowd (or at least a part of it) by proposing to ease endangered species protections in the Delta. And the fall-run chinook salmon population, which supports the commercial fishery, crashed. First, the pumps. Recall that last fall Judge Oliver Wanger ruled that the...
CONTINUE READINGYour Environmental Talmud Learning of the Day
This concerns one story of Honi the Circle-Maker, who famously demanded that God provide rain: "When he read [Psalm 126], which says, 'A song of ascent. When the Lord restores the fortunes of Zion, we see it as if in a dream," he was troubled. [Recalling that it was 70 years between the date of the Psalm and the restoration of the Temple], he said, how can someone sleep and dream for 70 years? "One day, he met a man who was planting a carob tree. He said to the m...
CONTINUE READINGStormy Weather
Tom Friedman has a nice column in the Times about climate change. He correctly points out that unusual snowstorms in D.C. do nothing to disprove climate change; if anything, he observes, such "weird" weather is just what you'd expect from a changing climate. And anyway, no one year or even decade of weather is definitive. To say that snow in D.C. disproves climate change is childish. It's about on the level of saying that Al Gore's views on climate can't be truste...
CONTINUE READINGThe “Write Your Own Permit” Approach to Climate Mitigation
We seem to be at an impasse. Cap-and-trade seems to be in political disrepute; market-oriented economists must find it aggravating that their idea is now considered too "liberal." Carbon taxes give politicians cardiac arrest. "Command and control" regulation is out of fashion. Perhaps it's time to try something new. Here's an alternative that has some of the same benefits as the familiar market mechanisms, but might be simpler to implement and more appealing to th...
CONTINUE READINGThe trouble with Chinatown
Ann proposes Chinatown as the greatest environmental movie of all time. Now, Chinatown is my favorite movie: the poster above is currently hanging on my office wall. it is a great movie. But Chinatown can't be a great environmental movie for one simple reason: It gets the environment wrong. The conceit of Chinatown is that a diabolical mogul, Noah Cross, essentially invented a water shortage so that the city of Los Angeles could build an aqueduct. Cross then ...
CONTINUE READINGThe Nuclear Option
According to an NYT report, President Obama has offered loan guarantees for two new reactors. If the project goes forward, it would be the first nuclear reactor built in the United States since the 1970s. In a speech in Lanham, Md., Mr. Obama announced government approval of an $8.3 billion loan guarantee to help the Southern Company build two reactors in Burke County, Ga., near Augusta. The proposal is to use an advanced passive design. "Passive" means that if the ...
CONTINUE READINGAnswering the Climategaters
Want to create a scandal? Just add "gate" to the end of any noun. Climategate is a good example. Real Climate ha an excellent post dissecting the charges of error in the IPCC report, which turn out to be quite insignificant (and some of them not even errors at all.) Of course, if you come three large dense volumes carefully enough, you can find some glitches. For example, here's the scoop on one of the few actual errors, on Himalayan glaciers: Himalayan glaci...
CONTINUE READINGA Website Named DSIRE
Those who are interested in Clean Tech, particularly from the investment point of view, will want to take a look at the DSIRE site. Sorry, it doesn't actually have anything to do with the Tennessee Williams play, I jsut couldn't resist the play on words. DSIRE stands for Database of State Incentives for Renewables and Efficiency. It's a comprehensive, state-by-state survey of incentives. So if you'd like to know about the twenty or so incentive programs in (say) R...
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