A Jolt to the Economy
Perhaps unavoidably, the stimulus package that passed the House on Wednesday authorizes broad investment goals, but offers few details. In some instances, this leaves us with much opportunity for honest debate. Consider, for instance, the various authorizations related to improvement and expansion of the electric grid. With up to $8 billion in loan guarantees, $6.5 billion for federally-owned transmission expansion, and $4.5 billion for grid modernization, that is up to...
CONTINUE READINGJody Freeman to White House
According to press reports, Jody Freeman, a Harvard Law School professor, will be the counselor for energy and climate change in the White House Office of Energy and Climate Change -- in other words, a senior advisor to Carol Browner. Jody is well known to all of us, having been a long-time member of the UCLA faculty before she went to Harvard. She is also the coauthor with Dan Farber and Ann Carlson of a leading enviromental law casebook. Congratulations, Jody!...
CONTINUE READINGFederal scientists could get increased whistleblower protection
Before it passed the economic stimulus bill on Wednesday, the House grafted on the text of the Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act, H.R. 985, from the previous Congress. That bill, which passed the House last year, would (among other things) have extended whistleblower protection to federal workers who reveal the dissemination of "false or misleading" scientific information or actions that "compromise the validity" of federal research or analysis. Enhanced protec...
CONTINUE READINGGobama Bounce?
Two days ago, the Emmett Center hosted what we thought would be a tidy, manageable panel and "roundtable discussion" on SB 375, California's new anti-sprawl law and the state's latest legislative attempt to tackle GHG emissions from passenger vehicles. In line with turnout to similar past events, we booked a room that holds 90 people and crossed our fingers that we'd fill it. After more than 260 people (community members, local city staffers, environmental lawyers, jo...
CONTINUE READINGNew Jungles for Old?
The New York Times has an interesting article about the growth of new forests as poor people abandon farms and move to the cities in less developed countries. Carbon storage is complicated, so we don't really know yet just how much effect this might have on climate. But it's obviously a very interesting development. As the Times reports: Here, and in other tropical countries around the world, small holdings like Ms. Ortega de Wing's - and much larger swaths of farml...
CONTINUE READINGThe Bathtub Effect: A sobering assessment of where we are on climate change (but what does this mean for adaptation efforts?)
Andrew Revkin of the New York Times has posted an important essay discussing implications of the recent report by Dr. Susan Solomon and others documenting the profoundly serious impacts that will result from letting GHG concentrations in the atmosphere get too high before they are stabilized (the subject of this post below by Dan and this one by Holly). The conclusion: we have to act big, and act now, to reduce our impacts on the climate. What is less obvious is what...
CONTINUE READINGConflicting data need not make environmental controversies worse
Anyone interested in the resolution of environmental controversies featuring conflicting or incomplete scientific accounts (and what interesting environmental conflict doesn't fit in that category?) should read this article by Biggs et al. in the January issue of BioScience (subscription required). As the authors explain, the fact that two scientific studies produce conflicting results or lead to differing conclusions does not mean that one must be wrong or fraudulent w...
CONTINUE READINGThe California budget squeeze hits Marine Protected Area research
At least two academic projects supporting California's marine protected areas program have been halted for now by the state's budget crisis. From Science Insider: Researchers were ordered to stop work immediately, says Rikk Kvitek of California State University, Monterey Bay, a principal investigator on a $20 million sea-floor mapping program funded by the state. . . . A major goal of the project is to create high-resolution digital maps to aid in establishing a state...
CONTINUE READINGA 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...
CONTINUE READINGGHG 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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