cap-and-trade

Is Cap and Trade Unfair?

I should probably start by putting my cards on the table.  I’m not really an advocate of cap and   trade as compared with other forms of regulation.  What I care about is getting effective carbon restrictions in place, whether they take the form of cap and trade, a carbon tax, industry-wide regulations, or something …

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EPA to Continue Emissions Trading in Place of Clean Air Interstate Rule

With the success of the 1990 cap and trade program for sulfur dioxide (the major cause of acid rain), cap and trade  has become one of the dominant regulatory means to control air pollution in the U.S.  And, of course, cap and trade remains one of the central mechanisms to control greenhouse gases in those …

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Pricing Carbon: How Would It Affect the Poor?

We need to put a price on carbon, but there is no reason why we should do so in a way that harms the poor.

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California Slowing Down on Cap and Trade

Yesterday, Mary Nichols slipped a bit of a bombshell  into testimony before the California Senate Select Committee on the Environment, the Economy and Climate Change.  She announced that the state’s Air Resources Board is planning to “initiate” the cap and trade program in 2012 but not “start the requirements for compliance”  until 2013.  This effectively …

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AB 32 alive and well after final order issued in AIR v. ARB, the EJ challenge to California cap and trade

On Friday afternoon, Judge Goldsmith of the California Superior Court issued his final order in the case pitting environmental justice advocates against the State’s Air Resources Board on the issue of cap and trade (order available here).  We’ve written a lot about the case and about the values conflicts underlying it (see here for access …

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Forest Offsets and Fuzzy Math in the Angeles National Forest

I previously posted that Sierra Club wants Governor Brown to re-examine forest offsets under California’s cap-and-trade program. One of the commenters to that post wondered if the plan to plant 10,000 acres of trees in the Angeles National Forest was an example of such an offset. Now I don’t know if that planting would count …

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Sierra Club asks Gov. Brown to re-examine AB 32 cap-and-trade

On May 9, Sierra Club requested that Governor Jerry Brown “re-evaluate” the cap-and-trade rule promulgated by the California Air Resources Board.  The Sacramento Bee has some initial reactions and you can read the original letter here.  As noted in our earlier posts, CARB’s cap-and-trade rule has come under judicial scrutiny and its status is somewhat …

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Newt is Yet Another Mind-Changing Republican Candidate Climate Denier

This climate change ad, posted today in a  Salon piece on Newt Gingrich and his “enviornmentalism problem,” is a must watch: [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qi6n_-wB154] Yes,  newly declared Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich appeared with Nancy Pelosi in a 2008 youtube video  to argue that we must do something about climate change.  But more recently he’s backed away from …

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Reading the Mary Nichols (carbon) tea leaves

It’s undoubtedly dangerous to try to read too much into short media quotes.  But Mary Nichols, the chair of the California Air Resources Board, is in a better position than most to judge (and to influence) the political winds on the future of the State’s cap-and-trade program.   Here’s her latest public statement on the issue, made during an appearance last …

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AEP v. Connecticut oral argument

This morning, the Supreme Court heard 75 minutes of oral argument in AEP v. Connecticut. My fellow blogger, Richard Frank, already gave us a preview of the arguments.  SCOTUSblog has a nice recap of what happened this morning. I would just like to highlight a few points from the oral argument. First, the Justices seem …

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