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Remedial Education for Berkeley Law Faculty

Or at least for John Yoo, who argues: Courts award damages based on the harm to the victim and the harm to society. Suppose you thought that the Iraq war was a mistake. If so, isn’t the proper remedy to restore Saddam Hussein’s family and the Baath Party to power in Iraq? If you are …

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Why I’m Boycotting Coke

Why Coke, you might wonder.  Why not Pepsi?  The answer is that diet coke is my soft drink of choice.  It’s easy for me to boycott other soft drinks since I don’t drink them anyway. I like diet coke, so that’s the subject of my boycott. But why boycott soft drinks at all?  Answer: Because …

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Waxman/Whitehouse carbon tax draft

On Tuesday, Representative Waxman, Senator Whitehouse, Representaive Blumenauer and Senator Schatz released their proposal for a carbon tax bill. They are currently seeking feedback on the draft proposal, which is accordingly short on details. The Waxman/Whitehouse proposal is to require downstream emitters (mainly power plants and other emitters) to purchase annual “carbon pollution permits” per …

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Climate Change’s Bipolar Personality

Climate change is literally bipolar, impacting both the northernmost and southernmost parts of the globe. But the pace and effects of warming differ at the two poles. At the northern end of the world, impacts are already dramatic. The Economist has a special feature on the Arctic, which provides an especially clear explanation of why the …

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Deadly spike in Beijing’s air pollution

This graph shows recent air quality monitoring data (PM 2.5) from the U.S. Embassy in Beijing. As the New York Times noted, this spike—seen as a thick haze in the city—has been described as “postapocalyptic.”  Thanks in no small part to the Clean Air Act, we have thus far avoided the need to walk around …

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The Last Rockefeller

Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-WV), the current chair of the Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee has announced his retirement.  Rockefeller is 75, and faced a tough re-election fight in West Virginia, which has gone from being the state of John L. Lewis to the state of Mitt Romney — it went for Romney last year by …

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What to expect from President Obama’s inaugural address

The countdown to President Obama’s January, 21 2013 inauguration begins: there are only ten days left for the President’s speechwriters to put the finishing touches on the President’s second, and final, inaugural address.  The inaugural address is the first of two important opportunities President Obama will have in the coming months to describe the course …

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Of Mollusks and Men: The Wilderness Act and Drakes Bay Oyster Company

The debate over Drakes Bay Oyster Company’s continued operation within the Point Reyes National Seashore created two unlikely foes: environmentalists in favor of transitioning the land to wilderness, and supporters of local, organic food and a longstanding family business.  The San Francisco Chronicle aptly termed it a “legal and philosophical slugfest.” The door seems to …

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Put That In Your Tank and Smoke It

The next time anyone tells you that an increase in gasoline prices (say, as part of a carbon-tax or a cap-and-trade system) would generate unbearable costs to consumers, think again.  The Los Angeles Times reports something that I have often seen but never really thought through: gasoline stations often a couple block away from each …

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Looking Ahead to 2050

Since New Year’s Eve is both a time for nostalgia and for looking ahead, it seems appropriate to see what the world will look like at mid-century.  The world will be facing considerable challenges then. The population will be bigger. The United Nations predicts that the world population will grow by 2 billion to 9 …

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