Do we need a weatherman to know which way the climate goes?

A new report, Climate Change in the American Mind, was just released by the Yale Project on Climate Change and the George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication.  This report summarizes and synthesizes original polling research on our opinions, attitudes, and knowledge about climate change.  (Statistician Nate Silver has an interesting post at Fivethirtyeight.com about some of  the report's findings;  h/t to Jon Wiener for this link.)  Whatever...

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California’s Low Carbon Fuel Standard–& a Paean to Applied Scholarship

Jonathan Zasloff has previously written about the California Air Resources Board's pioneering decision last week to mandate carbon-based reductions in state transportation fuels. These regulations, known as California's Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS), are the first of their kind in the United States. More importantly, the LCFS is an integral part of CARB's ambitious plan to reduce aggregate state greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by the year 2020, as mandated un...

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Will the Specter Shift Affect Environmental Legislation?

The answer is probably "yes," not because Specter will become an environmental champion but because his votes will shift at the margin.  If you look at the LCV scores (here), Specter is below 50% this year and for his lifetime average.  Part of that may be Pennsylvania -- Bob Casey is only at 60%, which is well below the scores for Maine's two Republican Senators.  (If you look at the map, environmental voting scores are highest for states that border either Canada or...

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Ruling by Justice Scalia Makes it Easier to Repeal Bush-Era Rules

In an opinion today dealing with FCC regulation of naughty language, the Supreme Court made it easier for the government to repeal or replace existing rules.  Ironically, this green light for the Obama Administration came from conservative stalwart Antonin Scalia. One issue in today's case was whether the FCC needed to give a fuller explanation of its action because it was modifying existing policy.  Some courts have read a prior Supreme Court case to require more evi...

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A framework for offshore renewable energy

Cymie posted here about the hearings Interior recently held in on both coasts on offshore energy development of all stripes. True to the President's commitment to making renewable energy development a priority, shortly after those hearings Interior's Minerals Management Service finalized regulations governing renewable energy development on the outer continental shelf. The regulations, developed under the authority of the Energy Policy Act of 2005, set out the terms on w...

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Interior to pull mountaintop mining rule

UPDATE 4/29: AP reports that the Justice Department's filing requests that the rule be vacated and remanded on the grounds that it was not preceded by ESA consultation. (Hat tip: PLF on ESA). Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced today that his department would ask the court hearing a challenge to a key Bush-era rule on mountaintop mining to vacate the rule and remand it to Interior. The rule, issued by the Office of Surface Mining in December under the Surface Min...

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The fat lady is warming up — make that singing

UPDATE 4/28: The Secretaries of Interior and Commerce have announced that they are revoking the Bush administration's midnight rule on ESA section 7 consultation. They apparently are not revoking the special rule on the polar bear (as they were also authorized to do under the omnibus spending bill). We will have more when the formal decision is released. The New York Times reports that the Department of Interior has sent revisions to the ESA section 7 consultation rules...

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Putting a Price on Carbon: Is It Needed? Is It Enough?

In Sunday's New York Times, Thomas Friedman made the case for putting a price tag on carbon: Price matters. Without a fixed, long-term, durable price on carbon, none of the Obama clean-tech initiatives will achieve the scale needed to have an impact on climate change or make America the leader it must be in the next great industrial revolution: E.T., or energy technology. At this stage, I’d settle for any carbon price mechanism — cap and trade, fee-bates, carbon tax ...

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Updating the Delta litigation line-up

The era of collaboration and cooperation that CalFed briefly brought to management of California's water system is well and truly over. Lawsuits are multiplying like rabbits, promising to provide full employment for water and natural resource lawyers in California for the foreseeable future. For those of you scoring at home, here are some of the latest additions to an already crowded field. Central Delta Water Agency v. US FWS:  Plaintiffs, in-Delta water users, chall...

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Shocking News About the Fossil Fuel Industry

Guess what? The fossil fuel industry has been deliberately lying to the public about climate change.  According to the Washington Post: "The Global Climate Coalition, a group of representatives of the oil, auto and coal industries, spent years telling the public that the link between human activity and climate change was too uncertain to justify U.S. participation in the Kyoto Protocol, a 1997 treaty aimed at curbing greenhouse gas emissions. In 1995, however, a 'pri...

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