China
Is USTR Trying to Increase China’s Carbon Emissions?
Our friends Daniel Firger and Michael Gerrard at Columbia Law School’s Center for Climate Change Law have written a useful new paper analyzing two important pending WTO climate cases. Of these, the more important appears to be DS 419, in which the United States is challenging China’s wind energy subsidies. Firger and Gerrard note that …
Continue reading “Is USTR Trying to Increase China’s Carbon Emissions?”
CONTINUE READINGGreen litigation in China today
For those interested in the state of environmental litigation in China, China Dialogue, a bilingual site on China’s environment, ran an excellent series of articles last month on the topic. I opened the series with an article entitled “Green litigation in China today.” Here is an excerpt. Environmental litigation is difficult business in China. Even …
Continue reading “Green litigation in China today”
CONTINUE READINGChina and the Environment: Some Progress on Lead Pollution
It’s a pleasure to be joining the excellent group here at Legal Planet. My focus will largely be on issues related to China and its environmental and energy challenges. I returned to the U.S. last month after seven years working in China on environmental protection and legal reform (mostly for the Natural Resources Defense Council). …
Continue reading “China and the Environment: Some Progress on Lead Pollution”
CONTINUE READINGWelcoming a New Blogger
We’re pleased to welcome Alex Wang to Legal Planet. He is beginning a two-year term as a Visiting Assistant Professor at Berkeley Law School. Alex comes here following six years as a Senior Attorney and Director of the China Environmental Law Project for the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). He worked on environment and energy …
Continue reading “Welcoming a New Blogger”
CONTINUE READINGClimate Change Impacts in China
The received wisdom used to be that climate change would have relatively little impact on China. But that views seems outdated. Like the United States, China is large and geographically diverse; as such, the impacts of climate change vary across the country. For example, the Chinese government reports that the “frequency of heat waves in …
Continue reading “Climate Change Impacts in China”
CONTINUE READINGChina and Carbon Markets
In a surprising development, China may be planning to create an internal carbon market a/k/a cap & trade. According to Climate Wire, When professor Chen Hongbo tried to promote carbon trading in China three years ago, he found himself under fire. As developing countries like China aren’t obliged to limit the byproduct of their economic …
Continue reading “China and Carbon Markets”
CONTINUE READINGWill the Future Be “Made in China”?
America used to b a place where the future happened first. Now we seem to be fight any kind of change, whether the issue is immigration, health care, the financial system, or energy.
CONTINUE READINGToo Cool to Avoid Blogging — The Straddling Bus
Critics of subways often argue, correctly, that they are very, very expensive. They argue much less correctly that they aren’t worth it from a cost-benefit perspective. (I’ll believe when they add in the subsidies for roads and automobiles, price auto traffic like they do with rail, and stop using tendentious examples to criticize high-speed rail). …
Continue reading “Too Cool to Avoid Blogging — The Straddling Bus”
CONTINUE READINGChina’s Growth in Energy Usage Truly Alarming
Cara blogged earlier this week about the fact that U.S. emissions were down “a whopping 7 % in 2009.” Just when you might have been thinking that we are headed in the right direction on the climate change front, today’s New York Times has a distressing story about Chinese emissions. The take home point: Coal-fired electricity …
Continue reading “China’s Growth in Energy Usage Truly Alarming”
CONTINUE READINGChina, Energy and the Economy
The New York Times reported — with seeming alarm — this weekend that China is now leading the world in the manufacture of wind turbines and solar panels. Yet shouldn’t we view this news as good for efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions? Action by the U.S. to reduce emissions, while absolutely necessary for geopolitical …
Continue reading “China, Energy and the Economy”
CONTINUE READING