Climate Policy

More Thoughts About Conservative Climate Perspectives

Climate issues are essentially factual, not ideological. We naturally all come to those issues with our own perspectives. That’s fine, so long as our ideological lenses merely color the facts rather than blocking them from view entirely.

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Major Berkeley Conference on Climate and Energy

Today and tomorrow, Berkeley is hosting a major conference featuring leading scientists, engineers, and policy analysts.  The keynote speakers include: Ralph Cicerone, President, National Academy of Sciences Chris Field, Co-chair, IPCC Working Group 2: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability Arun Majumdar, Director, Advanced Research Projects Agency–Energy, DOE A live webcast is available here.

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Will the BP Oil Spill Change Public Policy?

The oil spill catastrophe now engulfing the Gulf Coast brings home in incredibly vivid detail the ways in which human activity can damage the earth.  This is in stark contrast to climate change, for example, where the changes caused by accumulating greenhouse gas emissions are hard to see and where actions today will only affect the …

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The Sting of the Long Tail: Climate Change, Delayed Harm, and Backlash

In the comments to Ann’s earlier post, the question was raised as to why global temperatures haven’t declined in response to the decline in carbon dioxide emissions from Europe in the past year. I made a quick response to this question in the comments, but I wanted to elaborate on that response here.  What follow …

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Stormy Weather

Saying that climate change is a hoax because there’s a lot of snow in Washington is childish. Can’t we at least pretend to be grown-ups?

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Riding the Energy Efficiency Wave

At the “Beyond Copenhagen Conference” at Berkeley yesterday, one of the clear messages was that energy efficiency is one of the most feasible routes forward on climate change.  Energy efficiency has great interest not only to U.S. consumers, but also to countries like China that are concerned about energy security.  The energy security issue is …

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Priming the Political Pump for Climate Legislation

Dan, Rick, and Jonathan have all discussed the implications of the political events of the last week for climate change policy.  Certainly, it seems clear that both from a vote-counting perspective and from a political momentum perspective, the special election last week made passage of a climate change bill through the Senate generally harder.  And …

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Indian Federalism and Climate Change

Federalism is a hot topic (so to speak) for scholars working on climate change, but we have so far remained resolutely at home, focusing solely on American federalism.  It’s now time to start thinking about how federalism might impact India, which has maintained a federal system for more than 60 years, and has decentralized greatly in …

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Optimism on a Climate Bill?

At least, optimism  seems to be the White House message, according to a TPM report: On Friday the president urged speed in the broader shift in U.S. energy priorities and said he believed lawmakers — many of whom are skeptical of the energy bill — are following. “It is a transformation that will be made …

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Schwarzenegger’s REAL Test on Climate

Like any Hollywood actor, and like any politician, Arnold Schwarzenegger likes to talk a good game.  And on climate, he talks a lot.  He loves to promote inconsequential gab-fests like the Governors Global Summit on Climate Change.  But when the rubber hits the road, will he actually, you know, do anything about it? Whether a bill …

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