Update on DeChristopher trial
U.S. District Judge Dee Benson has ruled that Tim DeChristopher, the student who bid on federal oil and gas leases to protest global warming, cannot present a necessity defense in his criminal trial. The decision is not a surprise. The necessity defense typically faces a high bar in US courts, which require that the defendant show that his actions were necessary to prevent imminent harm and that no lawful alternative existed. According to the Salt Lake Tribune's report, ...
CONTINUE READINGEverything You Always Wanted to Know About China But Were Afraid to Ask
As President Obama heads to China, the World Resource Institute has launched a very interesting new website devoted to China, energy, and climate change. The chart above is an example of the kind of information on the website. Notice for example the important role of manufacturing emissions on the Chinese side versus transportation emissions on the U.S. side....
CONTINUE READINGTo auction or not to auction
In the comments to a recent post, Red Desert raises a good question about the application of cap-and-trade to greenhouse gases. Red points to this report in The Wonk Room of a letter signed by 14 Democratic senators asking that the leadership "ensure that emission allowances allocated to the electricity sector – and thus, electricity consumers — be fully based on emissions as the appropriate and equitable way to provide transition assistance in a greenhouse gas-regul...
CONTINUE READINGMore on the recent Pew poll and on debating the science
My colleague Steve Weissman writes well here about the recently released Pew poll on Americans' beliefs about climate change. Like Steve, I find the most troubling statistics from the poll to be the plunging numbers of people who seem to believe the underlying science. This is from Pew's write-up: 57% [of all respondents] think there is solid evidence that the average temperature on earth has been getting warmer over the past few decades. In April 2008, 71% said...
CONTINUE READINGBrown pelican to fly off protected list
The Fish and Wildlife Service today announced some very good news -- the brown pelican will soon be removed from the list of endangered and threatened species. This enormous fish-eating bird has been protected since 1970, when it was included on the very first list of US endangered species under a predecessor to the current Endangered Species Act. Its population rebounded after DDT was banned in 1972. By 1985, the pelican had recovered enough to justify delisting along...
CONTINUE READINGPublic Focus on Climate Change Slow to Develop, Hard to Sustain
The date was August 4, 1977, and Congressman Peter Rodino inserted, in the Congressional Record, an article from the New York Times that had run a week earlier. The Times article reflected on the Carter Administration’s effort to encourage the greater of coal as a power plant fuel. The Times said: “The National Academy of Sciences flashed a warning light this week at plans to rely on coal as a major energy source in coming centuries. Not that oil or natural ga...
CONTINUE READINGSaving the Japanese Black Bear
Grist had a really interesting story at the end of last month about Japanese black bears -- or ツキノワグマ if you prefer -- which have a tenuous hold on survival. What makes this story particularly interesting is that it is a preview of a world in which the idea of the "natural" has become problematic. Japan has some remote, relatively wild forests, but far more area in tree plantations or in rural areas that have been abandoned by an inreasingly urban popul...
CONTINUE READINGEPA to reconsider water transfers rule
I can't find this on EPA's web site, but BNA's U.S. Law Week and the Association of Metropolitan Water Agencies are reporting that the agency plans to reconsider the Bush-era rule exempting water transfers from the Clean Water Act's NPDES permit requirements. As I previously explained, the 11th Circuit upheld the water transfers rule this summer in a questionable decision that concluded that the rule was a reasonable interpretation of an ambiguous statutory provision. Re...
CONTINUE READINGSuperFreakonomics and Climate Change
If you haven't been following the controversy that has erupted with the publication of SuperFreakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance, you should be. In SuperFreakonomics -- the sequel to Steven Levitt and Stephen Duber's wildly popular Freakonomics -- the authors take on climate change. Their arguments are somewhat complex but essentially boil down to the following: the threats from global warming have ...
CONTINUE READINGClimate Change versus the Benzene Case
The Benzene Case -- more properly, Industrial Union Dept. v. American Petroleum Inst. -- is almost thirty years old, but is still the Supreme Court's most important statement on risk regulation. After considering mountains of evidence, OSHA issued a rule restricting benzene in the workplace. Benzene was known to be a carcinogen; the evidence was less clear about its dangers at the levels in industry at the time. The Supreme Court reversed and said that OSHA must qu...
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