Climate Change
Guest Blogger Ken Alex: An EV in Every Garage
Ken Alex is a Senior Advisor to Governor Jerry Brown and the Director of the Governor’s Office of Planning and Research. The views expressed in this blog post are his own. Four years ago, the number of electric vehicles on California roads was pretty close to zero. At the end of this year, it will …
Continue reading “Guest Blogger Ken Alex: An EV in Every Garage”
CONTINUE READINGGuest Blogger Ken Alex: Climate Science and Public Belief
Ken Alex is a Senior Advisor to Governor Jerry Brown and the Director of the Governor’s Office of Planning and Research. The views expressed in this blog post are his own. In the book Collapse, Professor Jared Diamond asks, why do societies destroy themselves through disastrous decisions, even after they perceive the problem? Why, for …
Continue reading “Guest Blogger Ken Alex: Climate Science and Public Belief”
CONTINUE READINGCongress and Energy Efficiency – The Tentative Steps of Shaheen-Portman
Senators Shaheen and Portman have created a bi-partisan bill to promote more efficient use of energy. It appears that they might succeed in getting it through the Senate, but the resulting bill would be missing most of its teeth. Is a toothless tiger better than no tiger at all? Perhaps surprisingly, the answer may be …
Continue reading “Congress and Energy Efficiency – The Tentative Steps of Shaheen-Portman”
CONTINUE READINGGuest Blogger Ken Alex: California’s Road to 2020 and Beyond
Ken Alex is a Senior Advisor to Governor Jerry Brown and the Director of the Governor’s Office of Planning and Research. The views expressed in this blog post are his own. Four years ago, when I was the head of the Attorney General’s environment section, I wrote a series of guest blogs for Legal Planet …
Continue reading “Guest Blogger Ken Alex: California’s Road to 2020 and Beyond”
CONTINUE READINGEPA and the social cost of carbon
This is Part I of a two-part series of posts discussing Eric Posner’s critiques of the role of cost-benefit analysis in climate regulation. The social cost of carbon (SCC, for policy wonks) represents the cost, in today’s dollars for the harm of emitting a ton of carbon dioxide equivalent gas into the atmosphere. Recently, the …
Continue reading “EPA and the social cost of carbon”
CONTINUE READINGEPA Sends Climate Rules for New Power Plants to OMB
Though I was somewhat skeptical that the Obama climate plan unfurled last week included much new, I’ve also argued previously that if the administration uses its extensive power under the Clean Air Act to regulate both new and existing power plants, the President will really have accomplished something on the climate change front. It looks …
Continue reading “EPA Sends Climate Rules for New Power Plants to OMB”
CONTINUE READINGLots of Rhetoric, Not Much New in Obama’s Climate Plan
The Obama Administration just released a “Climate Action Plan” to accompany the speech the President will give this morning at Georgetown University. I applaud the President for delivering a speech devoted exclusively to climate change. But for all the hooplah surrounding the President’s speech as “major,” the measures he’s proposed in the new plan to …
Continue reading “Lots of Rhetoric, Not Much New in Obama’s Climate Plan”
CONTINUE READINGTime May Run Out on Obama’s Most Powerful Climate Change Tool, Environmental Groups Threaten Suit
President Obama has a surprising amount of power to reduce greenhouse gases from the two largest categories of emitters, the transportation and electricity sectors, without getting Congress to act. He has already used that power to dramatically tighten fuel economy standards for passenger autos. But his ability to reduce emissions from the electricity sector — …
CONTINUE READINGHow eucalyptus trees are connected to denying climate change
Here on Legal Planet, we talk a lot about climate skeptics/deniers, and we’re highly critical of them (for good reason!). A lot of those climate skeptics/deniers are conservatives. But there’s no monopoly on scientific ignorance on one end of the political spectrum. An example of that is close to home here at UC Berkeley. In …
Continue reading “How eucalyptus trees are connected to denying climate change”
CONTINUE READINGCoal Power and Climate Denial
What causes certain political figures either to deny the potential for climate change, or deny that human activity is a major cause? That question came to mind while reviewing a new report issued by Ceres entitled Benchmarking Air Emissions for the 100 Largest Electric Power Producers in the United States. The report does an impressive …
Continue reading “Coal Power and Climate Denial”
CONTINUE READINGJoin Our Mailing List
Climate policy is changing rapidly. Stay in the loop with expert analysis via email Monday - Friday.
