Eight Profiles in Courage
Eight Republicans voted to pass the Waxman-Markey bill in the House. Some conservative groups are already threatening to punish them for this deviation from party orthodoxy. (That sort of self-destructive retaliation used to be typical of the Democrats, who used it as part of their arsenal of weapons for shooting themselves in the foot.) A refreshingly different perspective is presented in an op. ed. written by Michael Gerson, who spent six years as a policy advise...
CONTINUE READINGSolar Energy on the Fast Track
Yesterday, U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and Nevada Senator Harry Reid announced a series of initiatives to create a “fast track” for the development of utility scale solar energy facilities on Western public lands. This will include designating certain tracts of land as especially promising based on solar potential and land use compatibility, funding environmental studies, opening new solar energy permitting offices, and speeding up project review. Areas u...
CONTINUE READINGClimate change breaking news: EPA grants California waiver to regulate GHG emissions from cars
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has taken an important step toward addressing climate change and improving our nation's automobile fuel economy, by granting California and at least 14 other states a waiver allowing them to regulate automobile greenhouse gas emissions. This was not unexpected, given the recent passage of federal legislation with standards similar to the proposed California regulations and apparent softening of opposition from the auto industry....
CONTINUE READINGDo Religion and Environmentalism Mix?
I'm in Ohio this week for the biennial "Kallah" of ALEPH, the organizational home of the Jewish Renewal movement. This has led to an interesting question about the relation of religion and environmentalism. I'm taking a class given by Arthur Waskow on what he calls "eco-Judaism," which is a pretty self-explanatory phrase: Waskow believes that Jewish theology in general (and Biblical theology in particular) strongly tilts in favor of ecological consciousness. But I'm ...
CONTINUE READING“Betraying the Planet”
Paul Krugman has a terrific op. ed with that title in the today's Times. Here's the gist: Do you remember the days when Bush administration officials claimed that terrorism posed an “existential threat” to America, a threat in whose face normal rules no longer applied? That was hyperbole — but the existential threat from climate change is all too real. Yet the deniers are choosing, willfully, to ignore that threat, placing future generations of Americans in grav...
CONTINUE READINGEthanol and World Hunger
A new report, based on intensive modeling, raises serious concerns about the impact of first-generation biofuels such as corn ethanol. The picture for second-generation fuels, such as the cellulosic ethanol now being researched at the Energy Bioscences Institute, is much better. Note, however, that the source is somewhat suspect -- the OPEC Fund for International Development (OFID). The report certainly shouldn't be taken as gospel, but it at least should provide...
CONTINUE READINGCool Cars For California
Those California environmental regulators: there they go again... This past week, California's Air Resources Board adopted first-ever regulations requiring auto manufacturers to include sun-reflecting window glass for all cars and light trucks sold within the state. The new rules take effect in 2014. It turns out that conventional vehicle windows waste a lot of energy. Existing windows allow substantial amounts of the sun's heat to enter the vehicle; motorists run thei...
CONTINUE READINGClearing Title (and Rain Forest)
On Friday, the day Waxman-Markey passed the U.S. House, another significant legal development took place -- one that may also bear on climate change. President Lula of Brazil signed a bill providing legal title to squatters on Amazon land. Opponents argue that it will spark speculation in Amazonian property and increase deforestation....
CONTINUE READINGEnvironmental law humor
Clean Water Act mavens may recall the controversy about a year ago when the Army Corps of Engineers determined that the Los Angeles River was not navigable, and therefore did not fall under federal CWA jurisdiction (LA Times story here). A Corps biologist responded by kayaking the river on her day off to prove it was in fact navigable, and was threatened with suspension for her trouble. (Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility took up the biologist's cause and ...
CONTINUE READINGBiodiversity-friendly seawalls
Seawalls as typically constructed are smooth, vertical structures, beautiful to an engineer's eye but unappealing to tidal creatures looking for the more complex physical structure typical of a rocky shore. A new paper (Oecologia, subscription required) out of the University of Sydney shows that engineering and ecology need not be at odds, however. The authors describe an experiment in which engineers and ecologists, working together, designed a sea wall which incorpor...
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