Climate Change

Climate and Energy on the East Coast

Renewable energy and climate action are big issues in NY and NJ.

New York and New Jersey are at the core of what people think about in terms of the “Northeast.”  Both are very active in promoting renewable energy — New Jersey despite Governor Chris Christie, New York in part because of Governor Cuomo. New York in particular seems ready to position itself as the East Coast …

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The Top 10 Things to Be Thankful For (Environmental Version)

It hasn’t been a good year, to say the least. But there are some things to be thankful for.

Overall, it’s been a pretty lousy year since last Thanksgiving.  If you care about the environment, there are a lot of things NOT to be thankful for, or rather one big thing in the form of He Who Must Not Be Named. But there are also some  things for which we should feel thankful, many  of …

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Pineapples and Preparing for the Future at COP23

Guest post by Eric Sezgen, UCLA Law student

As Alex’s previous blogpost states, there was a sense of urgency at this COP. Urgency had observable consequences all around the conference and was not only embraced but enhanced by Fiji’s presidency. You could see this even in the COP’s logo. Whereas the COP logo is usually a sleek and trendy design to look good …

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Seeking Salvation at the COP

Guest post by Sunjana Supekar, UCLA Law student

“You have to act as if it were possible to radically transform the world. And you have to do it all the time.”  These words, attributed to famed anti-racist activist Angela Davis, permeated my thoughts as I walked through the halls of the 2017 UN Climate Change Conference in Bonn, Germany (referred to as the “COP,” for conference of parties). The major question for this year’s …

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The Growing Schism Between Coal and Oil

They’re both fossil fuels, but their producers don’t always have the same policy views.

Bush’s environmental policies were bad, but Trump’s policies are way worse.  One reason is that Bush and Cheney were oilman, and Trump is obsessed with coal. Yes, oil and coal are both fossil fuels, but they have different economics and different policy stances. These are two very different industries. The U.S. coal companies are in …

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A Sense of Urgency at COP 23

Guest post by Alexandra Gay, UCLA Law student

Christiana Figueres, the former Executive Secretary of the UNFCCC who is widely credited with the success of COP 21 in Paris in 2015, launched a global initiative earlier this year called Mission 2020. The overall goal of the initiative is to ensure that global CO2 emissions reach a “turning point” by 2020 and begin to …

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Dispatch from the Bonn UN Climate Conference

So what’s up with the Paris Agreement now that the U.S. has announced its intent to withdraw? The main annual UN conference on climate change is underway in Bonn, Germany, and UCLA Law is on the ground here. We’ll be reporting this week on what we see and hear. This conference, which serves as the …

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Officially-True Lies

Administration policy is based on a series of falsehoods.

There are some falsehoods which the United States government has now adopted as dogma.  They aren’t true but they’re repeated day in and day out. Sadly, they’re sometimes not even deliberate falsehoods, because the people who repeat them have been brainwashed into believing them or are just too ignorant to realize the actual facts. “Greenhouse …

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It’s Official: Climate Change is Real and It’s Serious

The Administration allowed a key scientific report to come out. They’ll have trouble explaining it away.

The release of the Fourth National Climate Assessment got some attention from the press.  The press mostly focused on the forthright endorsement of climate science by the NCA4 report — something of a surprise in the anti-science Trump Administration.  That was indeed notable, but there are other features of the report that will make it …

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House Republican Tax Plan Would Hurt Climate And Clean Tech Progress

The plan hits electric vehicles and wind energy but could present an opening for a national carbon tax

Republicans in the House of Representatives debuted their proposed tax reforms today, and climate and clean tech advocates are looking to see how the proposals will affect progress on these intertwined issues. Specifically, tax reform could impact electric vehicle and renewable energy deployment, which rely on federal tax credits to stimulate investment and demand. To …

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