The Nuclear Option
In the 1960s, when legendary environmentalist David Brower expressed his opposition to nuclear power, he exposed a rift among his Sierra Club colleagues, many of whom saw “too cheap to meter” nuclear power as the solution to air pollution problems. Brower and others focused on the danger of nuclear accidents, security issues, and the difficulty of securing high-level radioactive waste for long-term storage. The surge in nuclear power development in the 60s and 70...
CONTINUE READINGIdle Chatter
WBUR’s Here and Now radio show recently covered the story of George Pakenham, the self-named “Verdant Vigilante.” Pakenham roams the streets of New York City engaging in citizen enforcement of the city’s anti-idling law. The law, which has been on the books in various forms since 1971, prohibits idling for greater than 3 minutes (1 minute in front of schools). The problem is, according to Pakenham’s informal research, three quarters of the drivers in th...
CONTINUE READINGJudge Sotomayor’s Environmental Record
Now that President Obama has nominated her for a seat on the U.S. Supreme Court, U.S. Court of Appeals Judge Sonia Sotomayor's record as a federal court judge will be under the microscope. Political pundits, legal scholars and advocacy groups from across the political spectrum will all be scrutinizing Sotomayor's extensive record as a federal district court and U.S. Court of Appeals judge, in their understandable efforts to discern what kind of Supreme Court justice sh...
CONTINUE READINGSec. Chu pushes cool roofs – and Fox pushes back
Perhaps not surprisingly, given his long tenure at Lawrence Berkeley National Labs, Energy Secretary Steven Chu is making news for pushing what many think is a "triple play" climate change winner: cool roofs. As LBNL researchers have shown, making roofs more heat-reflective cools the earth dramatically, reduces energy consumption (by reducing air conditioning), and makes cities more healthful by combating the urban heat island effect. Transforming a regular roof in...
CONTINUE READINGGlobal warming winners? (oceans edition)
By now it is widely recognized that ocean warming and acidification caused by rising CO2 levels will adversely affect many organisms, especially those that depend on calcium carbonate shells. But there may be winners as well. Rebecca Gooding and a group from the University of British Columbia report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that the sea star, Pisaster ochraceus, a keystone species for rocky intertidal communities, grows faster and feeds mo...
CONTINUE READINGSharing the catch
According to Science Insider (subscription required), NOAA Administrator Jane Lubchenco has endorsed broader use of a "catch shares" approach to allocating the available catch in commercial fisheries. The shares strategy (also referred to as "individual transferable quotas" or "limited access privileges") gives individual participants in the fishery a permanent and transferable right to a set proportion of the total allowable catch. In theory, assigning shares should ...
CONTINUE READINGThe Environmental Argument Against Sotomayor–Sort of
As Dan points out, environmental issues do not figure to be large in the Sotomayor nomination, but there is one case where those interested in the environment (on either side) have a pretty large bone to pick with Judge Sotomayor: Connecticut v. American Electric Power, a major climate change case. In this litigation, several attorneys general sued a consortium of electric power producers, alleging that the carbon emissions from power generation constitute a "public ...
CONTINUE READINGIt’s Sotomayor!
President Obama announced his decision to nominate Sonia Sotomayor for the Souter seat today. Environmental issues are unlikely to loom large in the confirmation battle. So far as we know at this point, her most notable decision was in the Entergy case, which involved the question of whether power plants need to use closed cycle water systems for cooling. Judge Sotomayor ruled in the Second Circuit that the statutory language did not allow EPA to consider the rela...
CONTINUE READINGShould State Cap and Trade Programs Be Preempted?
My general sense is that most environmentalists disfavor federal preemption of state climate change policy making. States have led the way on progressive climate policy during the eight years of federal inaction under Bush, enacting renewable portfolio standards (29 states), greenhouse gas emissions caps (covering more than half the states), utility performance standards (four states), and auto emissions standards (California plus fifteen states set to follow Californi...
CONTINUE READINGTar Sands, Obama, California, and the Economy in Calgary
Spending just a few days in Calgary, Alberta, one thing becomes perfectly clear: oil is Calgary, and Calgary is all about oil. And increasingly, the story of oil all across Alberta has become the story of tar sands. Many around the world have viewed with horror, or at least dismay, Canada’s increased reliance on producing oil from its abundant tar sands fields -- leading to the destruction of much of Northern Alberta, and the consumption of startling quantities...
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