GHG

Republicans vow to attack federal climate change efforts

The New York Times reports that senior Republicans are saying they will aggressively attack our administration’s environmental and climate change initiatives if their party wins a majority in the House of Representatives.  EPA will be on the defensive, using its resources to defend against these attacks rather than move forward with regulatory initiatives that both …

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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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New bill in Congress by Rockefeller (S. 3072) would delay regulation of GHGs under the Clean Air Act

As Cara and I have already discussed in detail, the Environmental Protection Agency has committed to delay the rollout of regulation of stationary sources of greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act, and to regulate only the very largest sources. This backtracking from EPA has been a response to efforts by Senator Lisa Murkowski …

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Is EPA backtracking on Clean Air Act greenhouse gas regulation?

UPDATE: Cara discusses in this post some further developments that make the EPA’s plans more concrete, and concludes that the EPA is backtracking significantly from its proposed rule by delaying the timetable and by regulating fewer facilities. **** Last fall, our Environmental Protection Agency appeared to be on the verge of moving very quickly to …

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Moving Forward With Cap-and-Trade in California

In 2006, the California Legislature enacted the Landmark Global Warming Solutions Act (AB 32), which authorized–but did not compel–the California Air Resources Board to adopt a cap-and-trade program as part of a comprehensive strategy to reduce state greenhouse gas emissions. A year ago, CARB adopted its AB 32 “Scoping Plan,” in which it commits to …

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New EPA Greenhouse Gas Rulemaking Not Quite What it Seems

EPA is proposing to tailor the major source applicability thresholds for greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions under the Prevention of Significant Deterioration (PSD) and title V programs of the Clean Air Act (CAA or Act) and to set a PSD significance level for GHG emissions. This proposal is necessary because EPA expects soon to promulgate regulations …

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More on the Chamber of Commerce’s extraordinary demand for a “Scopes trial” on climate change

UPDATE: regarding the standard of judicial review of any on-the-record hearing (discussed below), see the comments: commenter Steve Taber disagrees with my initial analysis, and he may be right (though I don’t have time to look into it further today). ORIGINAL POST: Holly has written a thoughtful post discussing the meritlessness and cynicism of the …

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Meat and climate change redux

Back in January, I blogged about the link between meat production and GHGs.  Grist.org has taken up this issue recently, with an interesting article by Tom Philpott making the case that U.S. livestock production is a significant contributor to GHG emissions, and a rebuttal from farmer Eliot Coleman. As Philpott’s article notes, a U.N. FAO …

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California environmental justice advocates sue Air Resources Board over climate scoping plan

UPDATES: California Air Resources Board Chair (and former UCLA colleague) Mary Nichols comments below. The Complaint in this action is available here (caption page separately available here). A coalition of California environmental justice advocates has filed a lawsuit challenging the legality of the California Air Resources Board‘s scoping plan for AB 32, the landmark climate …

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Climate bill is out of committee (thanks in part to speed reader?)

Yesterday evening, by a 33-25 vote, the House Energy and Commerce Committee passed the Waxman-Markey climate and energy bill (full text here – all 946 pages of it). This quick analysis by Kate Sheppard at Grist.org is useful.  This New York Times article discusses the opposition to the bill from the agricultural sector, and the likely difficulties that …

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