A republican moment on climate change? Maybe not yet

The environmental community has been understandably excited about the prospect of finally getting U.S. legislative action in light of the popularity of Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth, the development of a public consensus on the reality of global warming, the election of Barack Obama, and strong Democratic majorities in both House and Senate.  That optimism, however, may be premature. Al Gore reportedly was warmly received by the Senate on Wednesday (see this story in...

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GHG Emissions and Meat Production

This article in the new issue of Scientific American has an important discussion of the ways in which animal-based food production contributes significantly to greenhouse gas emissions. From the article: Most of us are aware that our cars, our coal-generated electric power and even our cement factories adversely affect the environment. Until recently, however, the foods we eat had gotten a pass in the discussion. Yet according to a 2006 report by the United Nations Food...

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Energy and Environment Issues in the House

According to Energy and Environment Daily, House members have organized to promote energy and climate legislation "Reps. Jay Inslee (D-Wash.) and Steve Israel (D-N.Y.) are co-chairmen of the Sustainable Energy and Environment Coalition, a new caucus designed to push for policies that promote renewable energy and domestic manufacturing, create "green collar" jobs, help curb global warming and protect the nation's natural resources." This is a sign of the growing political...

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More accusations of politics trumping science and law at Interior

The Washington Post reports that officials at the Department of Interior ignored "key scientific findings" and the views of National Park Service officials "when they limited water flows in the Grand Canyon to optimize generation of electric power there, risking damage to the ecology of the spectacular national landmark."  The Post story, written by Juliet Eilperin and based in part on documents provided by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, describes a ...

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Getting U.S. Automakers Real

One footnote to yesterday's historic announcement by President Obama on national climate change policy: in signaling that the federal government will reverse course and support California's pioneering efforts to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from vehicular sources, the role of the American auto industry in this debate deserves renewed scrutiny.  Since 2002, domestic automakers have worked tirelessly in the federal courts, Executive Branch and in Congress to block C...

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A Wavering Federal Policy on Climate Change?

President Obama yesterday made official (sort of) his plan to fulfill a campaign pledge to grant the State of California authority to adopt pioneering greenhouse gas emission controls for vehicular sources.  That announcement, while expected, is a breath of fresh air when it comes to state-federal environmental policymaking.  It comes after eight frustrating years in which the Bush Administration both refused to address climate change at the federal level and did every...

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The perfect political storm

Co-blogger Dan Farber points to a story in Tuesday's NY Times about a new study by NOAA's Susan Solomon and others of the environmental effects of allowing carbon dioxide to equilibrate at levels much above its current 385 ppm.  As Dan points out, the prospects for already dry areas are frightening. There's another important lesson from the Solomon study. Global climate change is the perfect political storm, a problem that combines almost all of the features that make...

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Dust Bowl Redux

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqiblXFlZuk]According to a story in Tuesday's New York Times: The new study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, projects that if carbon dioxide concentrations peak at 600 ppm, several regions of the world -- including southwestern North America, the Mediterranean and southern Africa -- will face major droughts as bad or worse than the Dust Bowl of the 1930s. Global sea levels will rise by roughly thre...

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Engaging India on Climate

Via the Times of India, along comes the news that the state of Himachal Pradesh, just south of Kashmir, says that it will present a plan to become a carbon-neutral state. I'll believe it when I see it, although the state seems to have a reasonable business strategy: reforest thousands of acres and sell carbon offset credits through the Clean Development Mechanism (which gives carbon emitters the opportunity to purchase offset credits in developing countries.). Even with...

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The Awesome Power of the Blogosphere

Very early this morning, the good folks at the Northwestern Law Review published my article suggesting that the US Trade Representative serve as the lead agency for subsequent international climate change negotiation. A few hours later, President Obama announced that Todd Stern will serve as his international climate change representative, and work under Hillary Clinton at the State Department. I still think it's a decent piece, though. I'm not bitter. Nope. Not me...

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