UCLA

Tackling Plastic Pollution in the Oceans

New Emmett Center report recommends top ten solutions for marine plastic debris

Ever wonder where the plastic crap that we generate winds up?  Much of it ends up in the oceans.  An estimated 20 million tons of plastic litter enter the ocean each year, much of it from land debris but also coming from fishing and aquaculture operations, shipping, and other marine sources.  The stuff takes a really …

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Energy Innovation and the Law @ UCLA

A full-day UCLA Law Review symposium on Friday, November 1

The UCLA Law Review is holding a symposium next Friday, November 1 – Toward a Clean Energy Future: Powering Innovation Through Law.  Leading scholars from around the country will be at UCLA School of Law for the day to discuss innovative energy technologies, international energy issues, the challenge of new energy technology diffusion, and the …

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Reforming Groundwater Adjudications: New Pritzker Environmental Policy Brief

A new report discusses groundwater in CA.

The Emmett Center on Climate Change and the Environment has released its latest Pritzker Environmental Law and Policy Brief, “Allocating Under Water: Reforming California’s Groundwater Adjudications.” California leads the nation in groundwater extraction, but it lags behind in updating groundwater-related laws and regulations. As a result, protracted litigation clogs the courts and often fails to protect water …

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Mt Baldy getting balder? Scary projections of SoCal snow loss just released

UCLA is releasing today the first-ever detailed study of the effects of climate change on local snowfall, examining both business-as-usual and mitigation emission scenarios.  Snow loss is predicted to be very significant both in the mid-term (2041-2060) and by the end of the century.  The image above shows the study’s projections for reduced end-of-century snowfall …

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A Funny Way to Celebrate Earth Day

My home institution of UCLA has decided to commemorate Earth Day in a clear and bold manner: it has banned tobacco on campus, starting on — well, today. The Westwood campus is the first UC to implement the ban, following a call from President Mark Yudof to go smoke-free across the 10-campus system by 2014. …

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C-Change.la and a Sea Change in Climate Change Communication

It has become increasingly clear that in order to address climate change effectively through carbon emissions reduction and adapting to new conditions, we will need new communication tools. Last week, I blogged about a new, groundbreaking climate impact study that projects the impacts of climate change on southern California’s communities at unprecedentedly high resolution.  What …

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Local Clean Energy Policies

With cities and counties struggling to emerge from the down economy, clean energy development has been an economic and environmental bright spot. As Berkeley Law and UCLA Law discuss in the 2009 report “In Our Backyard,” California possesses numerous opportunities to deploy solar and wind energy facilities in existing urbanized areas, such as along highways …

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YouTube persuasion

Why do some messages persuade, and others don’t?   What is good science messaging?  How can we reach new audiences about the importance of sustainable resource management? If you’re interested in these questions, you might like this video on overfishing, created by a couple of UCLA undergrads as extra credit for a class in oceanography.  I …

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Conservatives and climate change

Dan notes, in a recent post, the ways in which potential Republican presidential candidates are backwards-pedaling on whatever statements they might once have made supporting action to address climate change.  (Climate change is apparently the new former mistriss — we’ve all flirted in the past with things we now regret.)  Former Congressman Bob Inglis (R-S.C.) spoke at UCLA …

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A poor grade for California’s new Rigs-to-Reefs law

Ever gaze up from a Southern California beach and wonder about the fate of the oil and gas rigs dotting the horizon?  Fellow blogger Sean Hecht has just published, with UCLA’s Institute of the Environment and Sustainability, an assessment of California’s new law governing “rigs-to-reefs” conversions–and suggests that lawmakers have much more work to do …

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