Climate Change
Perfection – Public Enemy Number One, or Straw Man?
We don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Is that always a good thing?
“Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.” How many times do you think you have heard that phrase? Many people attribute the concept to Voltaire, so as advice goes, how bad could it be? It’s darn good advice in many situations – such as selecting a checkout line to stand in at …
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CONTINUE READINGACE or Joker? Trump’s Self-Defeating Climate Rule
The ACE rule adds costs, achieves little, and disempowers the states. Nice job.
The Trump ACE rule violates all the Administration’s own deregulatory principles.To hear Trump talk, the point of deregulation is to reduce the burden of regulation on industry. But weirdly enough, that doesn’t turn out to be true of Trump’s effort to repeal Obama’s Clean Power Plan (CPP) and replace it with his own Affordable Clean …
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CONTINUE READINGWarren’s public lands policy proposal
The Senator’s policy proposals have a lot of good points, but could be even better
Senator Elizabeth Warren has become famous for her policy plan documents as she runs for President. A few months ago, she released a new one focusing on public lands. The key points in her plan include: A moratorium on all new fossil fuel leasing on federal public lands Providing 10% of US renewable energy from …
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CONTINUE READINGThe Democratic Presidential Candidates Should Debate How to Address Climate Change
The DNC Can Help to Make Climate Change Into an Issue of Consequence for the Campaign
This is my first post in my new role at the UC Berkeley Center for Law, Energy, and Environment, working on Project Climate. Last year, as a Legal Planet guest blogger, I wrote that political will and scale are the two biggest challenges of climate change response. So for this first post, I want to …
CONTINUE READINGPutting the Squeeze on Coal
It’s not enough to eliminate coal-fired plants. We have to cut back on coal production and sale.
Coal use by American utilities has declined sharply and will continue to decline. But we shouldn’t focus solely on U.S. emissions. But the industry also exports coal, and there’s been a big surge in coal exports in the past two years, much of it involving India. So it’s not enough to curtail coal use in …
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CONTINUE READINGMaking Key Policy Decisions in Advance of Droughts
Part 6 in a Series on Improving California Water Rights Administration and Oversight for Future Droughts
It’s hard to respond effectively to a crisis when you don’t have clearly defined priorities. This is true for sudden-onset crises, like floods and wildfires, and also for slow-onset crises, like droughts. My recent posts have explored why the State Water Resources Control Board (Board) should develop a contingency-based framework to support its drought decisions …
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CONTINUE READINGGetting to 2050
A roadmap for achieving an 80% emissions cut.
To do its part in keeping climate change to tolerable levels, the United States needs to cut its carbon emissions at least 80% below 1990 levels by 2050. That’s not just a matter of decarbonizing the electricity sector; it means changes in everything from aviation to steel manufacture, and reducing not only CO2 but also …
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CONTINUE READINGPhase Changes in Public Opinion
Public opinion on an issue like climate change can sometimes flip quickly. Here’s why.
You might think that the public’s view of an issue – climate change for instance – would evolve continuously as events occur and information becomes available. That often may be the case, but sometimes public opinion can change relatively quickly. A prime example is the legitimacy of same-sex marriage, which went from being a weird, …
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CONTINUE READINGIn Defense of Live Carbon
Why Stopping Deforestation May be the Hardest and Most Important Part of the Climate Change Challenge
When contemplating the enormous challenge of global climate change, it is sometimes helpful to think about a simple model of the global carbon budget (see figure below). These admittedly reductionist schematics distinguish between sources, sinks, and reservoirs. Fossil hydrocarbons from the geological reservoir–call this dead carbon—are extracted and burned to generate energy, emitting vast amounts …
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CONTINUE READINGDeveloping a Decision-Support Framework for Curtailment
Part 5 in a Series on Improving California Water Rights Administration and Oversight for Future Droughts
During a drought, California’s limited water supplies should be allocated transparently, efficiently, and predictably in accordance with the priorities that flow from state and federal law. But what does this mean in practice? What happens when there is not enough surface water to go around in a watershed? California water rights law says that certain …
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