Don’t breathe the air
For 186 million Americans, that's the message of the American Lung Association's State of the Air 2009 report. That's how many Americans live in areas with unhealthful levels of ozone or particulate air pollution. The ozone problem is much worse than the Association reported last year, primarily because EPA has tightened the ozone standard. But ozone pollution levels also have continued to climb in more than half of the cities with the worst ozone problems. The same is t...
CONTINUE READINGNew life for new source review
The Obama Administration is beyond its 100th day, but still busy on the environmental front undoing the work of its predecessor. One thing that means at EPA is breathing life back into the Clean Air Act's New Source Review program, which the Bush Administration had been busily trying to write out of existence. In the latest development on this front Lisa Jackson, Administrator of Obama's EPA, has agreed to review three controversial NSR regulations. NSR requires regulat...
CONTINUE READINGDo 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...
CONTINUE READINGCalifornia’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...
CONTINUE READINGWill 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...
CONTINUE READINGRuling 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...
CONTINUE READINGA 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...
CONTINUE READINGInterior 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...
CONTINUE READINGThe 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...
CONTINUE READINGPutting 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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