Good news for gondoliers
The Gallup poll showing increasing public skepticism about the climate change threat, which Holly blogs about below, does not bode well for Venice, California--unless you're a gondolier. A report was released yesterday, sponsored by several California agencies, giving more detail than ever before about the threats to California's coast from rising sea levels. Margot Roosevelt of the LA Times has a nice story about it here. The visuals showing flooding of souther...
CONTINUE READINGFrom Our Far Flung Correspondents: Copenhagen Day 3
A Ph.D student in the Berkeley Energy and Resources program writes: The third & final day of the climate conference dawned bright & sunny in Copenhagen, and I jammed myself & my poster onto a packed subway car for the trip back to the Bella Center. Trains run every 2-4 minutes in Copenhagen at rush hour; nonetheless, passengers are packed like sardines, especially when 2000 conference attendees try to get on within a few stops! Before jumping into tod...
CONTINUE READINGTSCA Reform: Show Me The Money
It's a new year so it must be time for renewed debates over the future of the federal Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA). In late February, the House Subcommittee on Commerce, Trade, and Consumer Protection of the Energy and Commerce Committee held a hearing specifically to revisit TSCA. With chemical policy reforms occurring in Europe with REACH and at the state level in California, Washington and Maine, there is increasing interest in taking action at the federal ...
CONTINUE READINGGlobal warming still a partisan issue
The latest Gallup Poll on attitudes toward climate change has a disturbing message for advocates of strong policies either to limit greenhouse gas emissions or to promote effective adaptation. Forty-one percent of respondents think that news coverage generally exaggerates the seriousness of global warming, the highest number since Gallup started asking the question in 1997. Worse, the partisan divide continues to grow -- 66% of Republicans and 44% of independents, but on...
CONTINUE READINGA little knowledge
As directed in the FY2008 Consolidated Appropriations Act, and less than six months late, EPA has now issued a proposed rule requiring mandatory reporting of greenhouse gas emissions. The preamble can be found here, the proposed regulatory language here, and additional information about the proposed rule here. Relying on its broad information-gathering authorities under Clean Air Act sections 114 and 208, EPA proposes to require annual reporting beginning next year both ...
CONTINUE READINGBill that would have designated over 2 million new acres of wilderness defeated in House – gun politics to blame?
Today, the Omnibus Public Land Management Act (S. 22), an important land preservation and management bill, was defeated in the U.S. House of Representatives, despite bipartisan support. The bill would have protected over 2 million acres of wilderness in nine states, enlarged the boundaries of several national parks, and authorized land swaps that would have helped to protect western water supplies and other resources, among other features. S. 22 actually combined wel...
CONTINUE READINGFrom 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 ...
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