Climate Change

Disaster Law

Disaster issues have several links to environmental law.  Perhaps the most obvious is that climate change is likely to cause a sharp increase in the number of extreme weather events such as floods and heat waves.  Less obviously, disaster law is the flip side of environmental law, concerned with how nature impacts us rather than …

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Educational Equality as an Environmental Issue

This is the first in an occasional series about surprising dimensions of environmental problems. Today’s thesis is that  promoting educational equality in developing countries would be a good thing for the environment.  In other words, environmentalists should favor directing more educational funds to girls rather than following the norm in many countries, which is to …

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New court ruling requires City, Wal-Mart to re-analyze GHG impacts of development and consider a more climate-friendly alternative

Under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), local governments and state agencies in California must analyze the environmental impacts of any permit to approve a new development project, and must identify and promise to implement mitigation to the extent feasible, before approving the project.  Over the last two years, it has become clear that climate …

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Who will pay for the costs of foreign carbon dioxide in our consumer goods?

I discussed in this post the problem of GHG emissions from imported consumer products.  We import and buy more and more goods from China and other countries that rely heavily on greenhouse gas-intensive coal-fired power.  As a result, our consumer habits are responsible for a large and growing proportion of GHG emissions in other countries.   These …

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Good News for Air, Climate, Traffic?

Two recent interesting and potentially related articles in the LA Times  suggest an encouraging trend.  California drivers are consuming less gasoline, a trend that began in 2006.  And U.S. car buyers may begin to look more like European consumers, buying smaller, more fuel efficient cars and keeping those cars longer. As the Times reports in …

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Climate bill has votes to get through key House panel, says Waxman

Breaking news: Greenwire (via the New York Times) and Grist.com are reporting that Rep. Henry Waxman said tonight he “believe[s] we’ll have the votes for passage” to move his climate bill through the House Energy and Commerce Committee.  (The Houston Chronicle is reporting that Rep. Waxman “expects” to have sufficient votes but takes a tone of skepticism.) Waxman …

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“Smoking gun” OMB memo on EPA climate change rulemaking is not what it seems

As Dan has mentioned, there has been a bit of a dust-up over a document in EPA’s rulemaking docket relating to EPA’s recent finding that greenhouse gases pose an endangerment to public health and welfare.  As Dan notes, the memo, apparently originating at the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB), is harshly critical …

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Ragging on Climate Change

OMB’s memo exhibits shocking disregard of or ignorance of the law.

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A New Website on Climate Economics

Real Climate Economics offers a wealth of information from a pro-regulatory perspective: The Real Climate Economics website offers a reader’s guide to the real economics of climate change, an emerging body of scholarship that is consistent with the urgency of the problem as seen from a climate science perspective. As the climate policy debate intensifies, …

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Wildfires Cause Climate Change, Climate Change Causes Wildfires

An obvious question about the raging wildfire in Santa Barbara is whether  climate change is the cause.  While it’s impossible to blame any individual fire on increasing temperatures, we know that climate change is responsible for more frequent and more intense wildfires in the southwest.  But less obvious and at least as troubling is that …

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