Making Offsets Transparent
Solve Climate has posted a letter from five state Attorneys General expressing concerns about several provisions of Waxman-Markey (a/k/a ACES). One suggestion they made, in particular, struck me as very persuasive: [T]he House bill does not require public disclosure of all offset project documentation, including project eligibility applications, monitoring and verification reports for agricultural or forestry offset projects, or disclosure of USDA’s determination of ...
CONTINUE READINGMisinformed Attacks on the Law of the Sea
While tidying my desk, I found a clipping from the Economist in mid-May, advocating U.S. ratification of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. (Yes, it was a wood desktop, not a LED screen, and the clipping was made of paper, not electrons. Call me old-fashioned!) The Economist makes a compelling case for ratification based on the needs of the ocean and U.S. national interest. The Economist is hardly starry-eyed about international cooperation (or environmenta...
CONTINUE READINGDuke Energy Leaves ACCCE But Who Remains?
Duke Energy, one of the largest electric utilities in the midwest and southeast and a prominent memeber of the U.S. Climate Action Partnership, announced this week that it has quit the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity. ACCCE, as it is known, is a trade group recently exposed as the front group that sent bogus letters on behalf of community groups opposing climate change legislation to Democratic representatives. But Duke claims its withdrawal fromÂ...
CONTINUE READINGExploring Climate Change and the Law
Looking for a way to pass the time over the long Labor Day weekend? Want to learn more about the legal and policy dimension of climate change? Check out Berkeley's course on climate law, now available here on YouTube. Scholars discuss everything from the economics of climate change to WTO issues raised by biofuels ,and from IP issues for energy technologies to the evolving role of insurance companies. Not to mention the Supreme Court's decision in Massachusetts ...
CONTINUE READINGWildfires Continue
The California wildfires are still going strong, with serious environmental consequences. As the L.A. Times reports, the effects on wildlife are devastating: Federal wildlife authorities said biologists and environmental rehabilitation specialists were expected to begin inspecting the damage and developing recovery strategies in the near future. Nearly every firefighter had a heartbreaking story to tell about an encounter with dead or dying wildlife. "We came across a...
CONTINUE READINGSacramento debates renewable energy, jobs
With Ken posting about California's renewable energy goals and ways to meet them, I'll point out the battle waging this week in the state legislature over SB 14, a bill that would legislate and broaden the 33%-RPS-by-2020 Ken discussed here (currently derived from an executive order). This from the LA Times: Under the measure, by Sen. Joe Simitian (D-Palo Alto), 33% of the electricity produced by California utilities by 2020 would have to come from renewable energy so...
CONTINUE READINGOne Step Backward, One Nano Step Forward. . . Maybe
The action on nanomaterials continued at the federal level in August, advancing forward in one area (tentatively) and faltering in another (perhaps temporarily). First, on August 4, the Interagency Testing Committee (ITC) issued its 64th report. (The ITC is an independent advisory committee charged with identifying potentially toxic chemicals for which there is inadequate testing data.) The report noted that EPA intends to pursue testing/information collection rule...
CONTINUE READINGThe Royal Society’s geoengineering report
We had a flurry of posts on geoengineering a while back (see here, here, here, and here). If you want to learn more about geoengineering, a great resource is this report, just issued by the Royal Society. It clearly explains the background, the approaches being proposed (which divide broadly into technologies for removing greenhouse gases from the atmosphere and technologies for reducing the input of solar radiation), and the risks associated with those approaches. The k...
CONTINUE READINGPlease don’t take my sunshine away
Just when we thought we were gaining momentum in the effort to get solar panels installed throughout the state, the word from Napa is that thieves are stealing ground-based solar panels from wineries. While the problem may not be widespread yet, it reveals a potential challenge for ground-based solar installations (a topic that Ken mentions in his post here). This problem could be particularly acute for solar panels installed along highways, as Oregon is pioneering. ...
CONTINUE READINGCan EPA kick-start climate legislation?
The San Francisco Chronicle this morning quotes EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson as saying that her agency will soon finalize its greenhouse endangerment finding (notwithstanding the Chamber of Commerce's absurd demand for an adjudicatory hearing). As the story says, "Supporters of climate change legislation are hoping the threat of EPA-mandated limits will spur congressional action." Although the House passed the Waxman-Markey bill in June, its counterpart has not yet b...
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