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Feds re-engage on the Delta
Last week brought a lot of good California water news. Restoration of the San Joaquin River took a giant step forward, as the first flows were returned to the channel in accordance with a settlement agreement negotiated in 2006, ending years of litigation by NRDC. As Steve and I noted, removal of four dams on …
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CONTINUE READINGHow useful are “planetary boundaries”?
The latest edition of Nature has an interesting article and accompanying commentaries (freely available here; longer version of the principal article here) on the concept of boundaries, or limits, or thresholds if you prefer, for the planet. The principal article, which has 27 authors led by Johan Rockstrom of the Stockholm Resilience Center, is called …
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CONTINUE READINGRising Seas: Doing the Math
Real Climate has a very interesting if occasionally highly technical post on sea level rise. There’s considerable disagreement about projections. Some projections rely on detailed modeling of the dynamics; others are based on fitting a model to past changes, more or less the way economists do modeling. The latter, “semi-empirical” projects are also in some …
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CONTINUE READINGPlease don’t take my sunshine away
Just when we thought we were gaining momentum in the effort to get solar panels installed throughout the state, the word from Napa is that thieves are stealing ground-based solar panels from wineries. While the problem may not be widespread yet, it reveals a potential challenge for ground-based solar installations (a topic that Ken mentions …
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CONTINUE READINGRight whales may need more room
The North Atlantic right whale is critically endangered. The National Marine Fisheries Service pegs its current population at roughly 313 individuals, unchanged over the last 25 years. (Early this year there were hopeful reports of a potential rebound, or at least a very good calving season.) Right whales migrate from winter calving grounds off Florida …
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CONTINUE READINGEnvironmental Economics at EPA
EPA’s Science Advisory Board is considering feedback to EPA’s 2008 draft guidelines on economic analysis. The preliminary SAB draft makes a number of interesting points: EPA needs to recongize that it’s discretion is limited: “only the legislative branch has the power to tax, subsidize, or assign liability, and both the Clean Water Act and the …
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CONTINUE READINGFor once, regulation precedes crisis
Often government doesn’t notice, or at least isn’t sufficiently motivated to respond to, the need for regulation until after something goes badly wrong (witness the financial market meltdown). But this week the National Marine Fisheries Service got ahead of the curve. On Monday, NMFS finalized a rule prohibiting all fishing for krill, the non-charismatic but …
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CONTINUE READINGEthanol and World Hunger
A new report, based on intensive modeling, raises serious concerns about the impact of first-generation biofuels such as corn ethanol. The picture for second-generation fuels, such as the cellulosic ethanol now being researched at the Energy Bioscences Institute, is much better. Note, however, that the source is somewhat suspect — the OPEC Fund for International …
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CONTINUE READINGCongress Looks at Pharmaceuticals in the Water. Here’s What They Should Do.
Cross posted with permission from CPRBlog This week, a subcommittee of the House Committee on Natural Resources held a hearing on the problem of waste pharmaceuticals ending up in the nation’s waterways. The issue sounds trivial – does Congress really need to spend its time worrying about people with a few left-over prescription pills flushing …
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CONTINUE READINGExecutive Branch Agreement on Mountaintop Removal: A Positive Step, but Only a Step
Cross-posted with permission from CPRBlog. Over the past few months, the Obama Administration has sent mixed signals on mountaintop mining, the practice of blowing the tops off mountains containing coal and piling the left-over rubble in valleys and streambeds. Early on, things seemed to be going well for the environment. First, EPA objected to the …
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