Climate Change
What’s in the final 2012 spending bill?
I’ve just finished plowing through H.R. 2055, the2012 Consolidated Appropriations Act, which was signed by President Obama last week. I was curious to see how many anti-environmental riders made it into the final bill. I haven’t seen much news coverage of the details of the final bill, and the White House offered no comment when …
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CONTINUE READINGFederal Court Invalidates California’s Low Carbon Fuel Standard
U.S. District Judge Lawrence O’Neill has ruled that the California Air Resources Board’s pioneering Low Carbon Fuel Standard, a key component of California’s multifaceted strategy to reduce the state’s aggregate greenhouse gas emissions under AB 32, is unconstitutional. In his December 29th ruling in Rocky Mountain Farmers Union v. Goldstene, the Fresno-based federal judge issued …
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CONTINUE READINGTen of the Top Environmental Stories of 2011
Nuclear reactor meltdown in Japan. EPA issues new rules limiting mercury emissions by power plants. Durban climate summit produces modest progress, as developing countries begin to acknowledge the need for binding limits on their carbon emissions. White House kills scheduled new regulations of ozone. California adopts cap-and-trade system under AB 32. White House announces stringent …
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CONTINUE READING“White Christmas” — A Song of Climate Change?
I’m dreaming of a white Christmas Just like the ones I used to know Irving Berlin was prescient when he wrote those words over seventy years ago. Little did he know that White Christmases were on their way to becoming a thing of the past. This year is a striking illustration, as ThinkProgress reports: In …
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CONTINUE READINGChurchill’s Wisdom and Climate Change
According to Yale poll results from last month, 63% of Americans now believe climate change is real, 17% think it isn’t, and 20% say they don’t know. Where does Churchill come into this? To see that, you have to turn back the clock seventy years to December 1941. On the eve of Pearl Harbor, only …
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CONTINUE READINGSigns of the (NY) Times
The Times has two interesting environmental stories today. Both are worth reading. They relate in different ways to climate change, but they’re both interesting even if climate change isn’t an issue that excites you. The first and most important story is about melting of permafrost in the Arctic. Huge amounts of carbon are locked up …
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CONTINUE READINGThe Durban Outcome: End of CBDR?
I wasn’t in Durban for the last days of wrangling, so I missed some late nights, dramatic speeches, and unexpected alliances. ClimateWire has the best account I’ve seen of the last-minute drama (sub. req’d.: “How a Belligerent, Sleep-Deprived Crowd in Durban Arrived at Consensus”). Highlights include a ministerial-level “huddle to save the planet”; invocations of …
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CONTINUE READING4 degrees warming here we come!
With the Durban COP17 negotiations concluded, there seem to be two lines of thought in the environmental community: Wow, that was better than expected. Our climate is really screwed. In this case, I think both (1) and (2) can be simultaneously true. For some summaries of what went down at Durban, check out CleanTechnica, Climate …
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CONTINUE READINGIs EPA regulation of carbon dioxide anti-democratic?
There’s been a lot of noise from House Republicans (and others) about how EPA regulation of carbon dioxide under the Clean Air Act is somehow an end-run around Congress or anti-democratic. But it is neither.
CONTINUE READINGPotential for 2015 roadmap from Durban?
Reuters reports on a potential roadmap for future climate change action that is developing at COP17 in Durban. Under the EU plan, parties would agree to a road map that would lead to legally binding commitments for GHG emission reductions in 2015. Up to this point, the head of the U.S. delegation, Jonathan Pershing, had …
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