India’s New Government and Climate Change: Good News, Bad News
The Congress Party's unexpected strong victory in the 2009 elections has also brought one of the strongest Cabinets in recent times. For those interested in the upcoming climate talks, however, it also presents some challenges. At the end of the day, climate policy will not be a focus of the government, but there are some important silver linings. None of the biggest Cabinet players seem to be what climate activists would like. But there appears to be significant...
CONTINUE READINGPassage to India
Just arrived in Hyderabad, India, for the RAND/India School of Business conference on entrepreneurship. After that, I make my way west to Bombay, and then north to Delhi, where on June 19th, the new Jindal Global Law School will sponsor a major conference on climate. It's (sometimes) nice going to conferences, but I am also hoping to find out more about productive ways to engage India on the climate issue. Like virtually all developing countries, New Delhi has fi...
CONTINUE READINGRegulatory Fees in California: Killing Two Birds with One Stone?
The meltdown of the State of California’s budget raises a host of questions about governance, taxes and politics in the state and beyond. One of those questions implicates other concerns regarding the design and implementation of effective environmental regulation. As my father used to say, “Sometimes cheap is too expensive,” an adage that is borne out by the results of regulation on the cheap. California legislators add more and more regulatory initiatives t...
CONTINUE READINGThe China Syndrome
After her trip to China, Speaker Pelosi was upbeat about the Chinese attitude toward climate change, YahooGreen reports: US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Tuesday expressed high hopes of cooperation between the United State and China, the two biggest emitters of greenhouse gases, ahead of key climate change talks. "We did see that the Chinese government knows that they have to do something," Pelosi told a news conference on the heels of a weeklong trip to China with other...
CONTINUE READINGHummer to China
At the close of last week's Congressional delegation trip to China to discuss, among other things, climate change commitments, Rep. Edward Markey had this to say about the upcoming Copenhagen talks and efforts to convince the Chinese to agree to GHG caps (as reported in the NYT): "This is going to be one of the most complex diplomatic negotiations in the history of the world." Not encouraging words. Today comes news that a Chinese manufacturer is buying Hummer from...
CONTINUE READINGSave the Tuna!
Amid concerns about the possible exhaustion of tuna stocks, Science reports on a positive step: Representatives of Western Pacific island nations last week put the finishing touches on a series of bold new measures aimed at saving the world's last great tuna stocks. Last May, the group decided to bar fishing in two huge pockets of international waters, creating the largest ever no-fishing zone. Fishing in the rest of the Western Pacific is regulated by the Western and ...
CONTINUE READINGNew and Noteworthy in the Eco-Blogosphere
For the environmental world at large, here are some noteworthy posts: Africa needs substantially scaled-up finance, technology and capacity-building to combat climate change 2009 Hurricane Names to Watch for, as Season Begins After a record-breaking 2008 hurricane season, the first storm has formed before the official June 1 start to the 2009 season. The hydrogen road rally hits the West Coast Confronting Slow Rate of Auto Technology Change Legal Risk of Build...
CONTINUE READINGNorth Korea and the Environment
Like most people, I knew that North Korea was short on food. What I didn't realize is that this is largely due to environmental degradation. According to a 2004 U.N. report,"Major crop yields fell by almost two thirds during the 1990s due to land degradation caused by loss of forest, droughts, floods and tidal waves, acidification due to over-use of chemicals, as well as shortages of fertiliser, farm machinery and oil." Strangely, despite its general pariah/rogue ...
CONTINUE READINGReturn to Chernobyl
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oU5yrdofbw0&feature=player_embedded] This is from a site dedicated to developments at Chernobyl....
CONTINUE READINGNo Butts About It
The New York Times has reported on a stealth environmental crisis, one that the public has heretofore regarded as the mere detritus of a serious public health controversy. But discarded cigarette butts constitute a major environmental crisis as well, and public attention to that crisis is long overdue. In its recent story, the Times notes the omnipresent nature of discarded cigarette butts in the human environment. In the U.S., cigarette butts constitute nearly one-...
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