From Our Far Flung Correspondents: Copenhagen Day 2
A Berkeley Ph.D student in the Energy and Resources program writes: Day 2’s blog will be brief, since it’s already after midnight Denmark time. It’s been a very good day, and my brain is once again full, and ready for bed. Today started with three plenary speakers, including our ERG’s own Dan Kammen plus Prof. Bill Nordhaus (Yale) and Prof. Nebojsa Nakicenovic (IIASA, Vienna U., author of SRES). Bill Nordhaus made the political expediency case for global c...
CONTINUE READINGFailing to “Do the Math”
Remember that DOE canceled the demonstration project for carbon sequestration in Matton, Illinois because of cost over-runs. It turns out that they screwed up the numbers, according to GAO. Now that DOE has a Nobel prize winner at the helm, maybe its math skills will improve.According to Greenwire: A $500 million math error led the Bush administration to cancel plans for FutureGen, a clean coal and carbon capture and sequestration project, the Government Accountabili...
CONTINUE READINGCalifornia’s Salmon Crisis – Searching for Solutions
All the available scientific evidence indicates that California's salmon populations are in deep trouble: several sub-species are currently listed as threatened or endangered under federal and state endangered species laws; the commercial salmon fishing season off the Northern California coast will be shut down for the second year in a row; and the resulting economic impact on California's commercial fishing industry is equally dire. Salmon are a vitally important comm...
CONTINUE READINGNobody’s perfect
The first 50 days of the Obama administration have been heady days indeed for the environmental community. EPA has promised to reconsider its denial of California's request for permission to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from cars and to think about regulating CO2 emissions from new stationary sources; the Department of Interior has put the brakes on a Bush administration proposal to open new areas to offshore drilling; and presidential memoranda have called for a ...
CONTINUE READINGAn important step toward scientific integrity
Yesterday, together with his executive order on stem cell research, President Obama issued a memorandum to the executive branch on scientific integrity. (Dan noted the news of the pending decision here.) The memorandum is just a starting point, but it is a very good one. It elevates the issue to a high profile, assigning the Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy (John Holdren, if the Senate ever acts on his nomination) "the responsibility for ensu...
CONTINUE READINGEnvironmental Measures in Spending Bill Clear Congress
At the same time, the measure chips away at several leftover Bush administration policies. It clears the way for the Obama administration to reverse a rule issued late in the Bush administration that says greenhouse gases may not be restricted to protect polar bears from global warming. Another Bush administration rule that reduced the input of federal scientists in endangered species decisions can also be quickly overturned without a lengthy rulemaking process. This ac...
CONTINUE READINGNational Land Use/Smart Growth Policy Coming Soon?
If local governments have maintained control over one policy area, it is land use. Despite tinkering around the edges, states have mostly stayed out, and for good political reasons: land use is the most visible policy that affects people at the local level. But if the Obama Administration moves forward to regulate greenhouse gases, that could all change -- whether or not EPA institutes cap-and-trade or any other new sort of climate policy. How? The key lies in one of t...
CONTINUE READINGVan Jones to CEQ
Another potentially great Obama appointment today to CEQ -- a White House entity that might as well stand for Climate and Energy Questions these days. This from Greenwire: Author and activist Van Jones will serve as a special White House adviser for "green" jobs, enterprise and innovation. Jones, 40, will work within the Council on Environmental Quality, which coordinates President Obama's climate, energy and other environmental policy initiatives with federal agen...
CONTINUE READINGReport from Our Farflung Correspondents: Copenhagen Day 1
A Berkeley student sends a detailed report: The IARU Scientific Congress on Climate Change: Global Risks, Challenges, & Decisions is being held in the same conference center that is booked for the official Copenhagen treaty negotiations, a facility called the Bella Center about ten minutes outside of Copenhagen's city center. Like most of the other 1400+ conference attendees, I arrived by public transit and was greeted upon my arrival by a gigantic wind turbine in...
CONTINUE READINGRediscovering the Lost Promise of NEPA
NEPA -- the National Environmental Policy Act -- is the forgotten elderly relative of environmental law. Its requirement of environmental impact statements is now frequently avoided by a clever workaround. Rather than issuing an environmental impact statement, an agency adopts mitigation measures that are supposed to reduce the legal of environmental impacts below the trigger point -- although no one really knows if these measures are successful. Yet, there is much...
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