Climate Change
Goodby Ski Slopes, Hello Drought
Climate change means not only changes in temperature, but changes in precipitation. These precipitation changes are especially important in arid regions like the American West. There is reason to be concerned about the future of Western climate, according to the latest report from ScienceNow: The Rocky Mountains have lost an unusual amount of springtime snowpack …
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CONTINUE READINGGrandfathering bad air: EPA exempts power plant from new climate and air quality rules
EPA has issued a controversial decision exempting a new, natural-gas power plant proposed for California’s San Joaquin Valley, a region with some of the worst air quality in the country, from the most up-to-date Clean Air Act rules aimed at reducing climate emissions and the pollutants NO2 and SO2. Here’s the E&E story, and here’s the EPA decision, likely to …
CONTINUE READINGBreaking News: AB 32 Cap and Trade Program Allowed to Proceed Pending Appeal
The 1st Appellate District of the California Court of Appeal has temporarily stayed (in other words lifted) the trial court’s injunction preventing the California Air Resources Board from implementing its cap and trade program for greenhouse gas emitters. As Cara blogged previously, the trial court in Association of Irritated Residents v. ARB issued a writ of …
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CONTINUE READINGOil and Food
Today’s NY Times has two unusually interesting pieces, one on food and the other on oil. The article about food examines the difficulty of feeding an expanding and more affluent world population in the face of climate change: A rising unease about the future of the world’s food supply came through during interviews this year …
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CONTINUE READINGTough Political Choices On Climate Are Hardly Unique to U.S: The Case of Germany and Nuclear Power
German Chancellor Angela Merkel made headlines this week when she announced that the country would phase out its nuclear power plants by 2022. The Fukishima nuclear crisis in Japan led Germany to review its reliance on nuclear power and the result of that review was Merkel’s decision to shut down the country’s existing plants. Here’s …
CONTINUE READINGAB 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 …
CONTINUE READINGForest 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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CONTINUE READINGGood news, bad news on understanding climate science: WaPo and Los Alamitos ed boards
You can’t get to good climate policy if policymakers don’t believe (or don’t profess to believe) that there’s a problem to fix. With this truism in mind, it’s kind of a “two roads diverged in the woods” morning for understanding climate science and policy. First we have the editorial board of the Washington Post, not …
CONTINUE READINGSierra 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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CONTINUE READINGScholastic, Inc. publishes pro-coal curriculum for fourth graders, apparently paid for by coal industry
Yesterday, I wrote about a satirical campaign in which anti-coal activists spoofed a Peabody Energy website in order to publicize the link between burning coal and childhood asthma. The satirical campaign included fake child-oriented games and discounted asthma inhalers. But all satire aside, the coal industry really is marketing its product directly to children. The …
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