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The Congressional Back Door Attack on California’s Environmental Programs
California’s Environmental Programs
Today’s Los Angeles Times reports on disturbing, broad-based efforts in Congress that threaten to eviscerate a host of California’s cutting-edge environmental initiatives, most prominently its “Green Chemistry” program. The saga begins with the California Legislature’s enactment of the state’s “Green Chemistry Initiative” (GCI) in 2008. The overarching principle behind GCI is to mandate the design of chemical products …
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CONTINUE READINGU.C. Davis Professor Dan Sperling Awarded Blue Planet Prize
Kudos to my U.C. Davis faculty colleague, Dan Sperling, this year’s recipient of the prestigious Blue Planet Prize. The Prize, awarded by the Asahi Glass Foundation, is often referred to as the Nobel Prize for environmental science. Dan Sperling is one of the most influential transportation scholars and policymakers in America. A professor of engineering …
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CONTINUE READINGEnvironmental Justice, Metrics & California’s San Joaquin Valley
This week the California Environmental Protection Agency issued a disturbing but worthwhile report on environmental justice issues in California. That report confirms what many environmental justice advocates and state residents already assumed: that the San Joaquin Valley is–far and away–the most environmentally-challenged region of the state. According to the CalEPA press release accompanying the report, …
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CONTINUE READINGCalifornia Sued Again Over Cap-and-Trade Program
Pacific Legal Foundation filed suit today against the state’s Air Resources Board on the grounds that the auction of allowances under California’s cap-and-trade program constitutes an unconstitutional tax. In the new suit, Morning Star Packing Company v. California Air Resources Board, PLF argues that a) the auctioning of revenues constitute a tax which b) requires …
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CONTINUE READINGOn the politics of the Keystone pipeline
This article from the New York Times a couple of days ago describes how President Obama, on a fundraising visit here in the Bay Area, made clear how difficult environmental politics are for a President in the midst of a recession – especially the Great Recession: Appearing at the home of an outspoken critic of …
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CONTINUE READINGSecond California cap-and-trade auction sells almost $225 million worth of allowances
Results are in from California’s second cap-and-trade auction. California Air Resources Board (CARB) offered 12.9 million 2013-vintage allowances along with 9.56 million 2016-vintage allowances. CARB sold all of the 2013 vintage at $13.62 per allowance and almost half (4.44 million) of the 2016 vintage at $10.71 per allowance. In total, that amounts to a bit …
CONTINUE READINGThe future of climate politics (Pt. 2)
In my last post, I noted a recent report that called for a new political path for environmentalists and others seeking to enact carbon policy in the United States, one that focused on developing policy proposals that would help mobilize a grassroots movement to support limits on greenhouse gases. My question was, is there anything …
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CONTINUE READINGIs California Fracking Regulation Out of Focus?
I’ve long been skeptical of the push that some on the left have made to ban hydraulic fracturing of natural gas. From an environmental perspective, I’d much rather have a natural gas-based fuel mix than one based on coal, and in any event, if there is that much money in the ground, people are going …
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CONTINUE READINGThe Political Path to Federal Climate Legislation
For climate legislation to pass, U.S. politics will have to become more like California.
CONTINUE READINGUC Berkeley report demonstrates need for strict resource shuffling rules in cap-and-trade
The Energy Institute at Haas, part of UC Berkeley, has a new study that looks at California’s rules for regulating electricity importers in the cap-and-trade program. These rules attempt to keep importers from gaming the cap-and-trade system via resource shuffling. The Energy Institute has simulated different counterfactual cap-and-trade rules using 2007 electricity market data. The …
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