Climate Change
Update on the Litigation Over EPA’s Rule Controlling Greenhouse Gas Emissions from New Power Plants
UCLA Faculty File Amicus Brief on Behalf of Technological Innovation Experts
Late in 2015, the Environmental Protection Agency issued New Source Performance Standards to control greenhouse gas emissions from new and modified fossil-fuel-fired power plants under the Clean Air Act. This regulation is a companion to the more-often-discussed Clean Power Plan rule, which addresses greenhouse gas emissions from existing sources in the power generation sector. Last …
CONTINUE READINGCheaper, Cleaner Power
The cheapest new power today: gas, wind, solar. Almost never coal.
What’s the cheapest way to add power to the grid where you live? Unless you live near Lake Superior, the answer isn’t coal — not even in West Virginia or Kentucky. Beyond that, the exact answer depends on just what you means by cheap. A major study from UT Austin digs deep into this question. …
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CONTINUE READINGGOP Mayor: “Let’s Talk About the Octopus in the Room”
An octopus in a parking garage? It’s a sign of the times.
Jim Cason, the GOP mayor of Coral Gables, Florida, wants us to talk about climate change: “‘We’re looking to a future where we’re going to be underwater, a great portion of South Florida,’” Cason said. ‘For all of us down here, this is really not a partisan issue. We see it. We see the octopus in …
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CONTINUE READINGGOP Climate Denial Is Way Out of the U.S. Mainstream
The Party’s stance is out of touch with businesses, the public, scientists, and many GOP voters.
The national GOP seems to be locked into climate change denial. This stance puts the GOP leadership increasingly alone. They’re out of touch with the business community, the public, scientists, and even many of their own voters. Out of Touch with the Business Community In 2015, Shell and BP called for international cooperation to achieve the …
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CONTINUE READINGTillerson and Perry – It’s Complicated
They’re not as bad as you might think. Relatively speaking.
The immediate environmentalist reaction to Rex Tillerson and Rick Perry — Trump’s choices to run the Departments of State and Energy — is that these are disastrous choices, like Trump’s selection of climate change denier Scott Pruitt to run EPA. That’s understandable. After all, Tillerson is the CEO of Exxon. As to Perry, the Washington Post headline says …
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CONTINUE READINGAnd the EPA Pick Is…
Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt
According to reports this morning, the EPA pick will be Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt. We’ll hear more about him in the coming days. For me, the story that sticks out most about him is this one – revealing his history of copying and pasting letters written by fossil fuel lobbyists and sending them under …
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CONTINUE READINGRevised SLCP Strategy Demonstrates the Impact of SB 1383
Many in the environmental community, myself included, heralded the passage of SB 1383 in the California legislature. This bill is the first state law to target short-lived climate pollutants (SLCPs), and it codified the reduction goals that ARB had adopted as part of its general GHG reduction agenda. This is not a trivial accomplishment – …
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CONTINUE READINGTrump’s Public Statements Aren’t Relevant in Assessing His Likely Climate Policy
The Media Need to Take Trump’s Advisors, and Their Policy Proposals, More Seriously Than They Take Trump’s Off-the-Cuff Comments
The media need to get their act together when they report and editorialize about President-elect Donald Trump’s public statements. Chief among many failures in reporting on the campaign was the tendency of major newspapers and television outlets to focus on candidates’ rhetoric, symbolism, and character, to the virtual exclusion of governance and policy. This contributed …
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CONTINUE READINGSurviving the Trump Research Funding Drought
A Model for State Support of Climate and Energy Research
Federal funding for research on renewable energy and climate change is likely to take a nose-dive under Trump. For instance, a senior advisor recently announced that NASA’s earth sciences research program would be scrapped. In a previous post, I argued that state governments should help pick up the slack. Doing so could have economic benefits …
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CONTINUE READINGConflicting News about President-Elect Trump and Climate Change
Transition Team Uniformly Anti-Climate but Trump Signals Open Mind to NY Times
Today we got a sliver of hope from President-Elect Trump about remaining in the Paris Agreement. He also acknowledged a connection between human activity and climate change, something obviously at odds with his campaign rhetoric. Trump told the New York Times he would “keep an open mind” about the U.S. commitment to the Paris Agreement. He …
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