Climate Change
A New “Study” on Forest Certification: SFI’s Latest Attempt to Fool Consumers?
I’ve posted before on the competing systems of forest certification, in particular the fight between the Forestry Stewardship Council (FSC), which is really the gold standard, and the Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI), an industry-driven effort that has substantially weaker standards and many have accused of greenwashing. SFI has improved its standards in recent years, but …
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CONTINUE READINGConstitutional Issues in Cap and Trade: New Light from an Unexpected Source
At the end of April, the Supreme Court decided an obscure case called McBurney v. Young about state public records law. Quite unexpectedly, the court’s opinion turns out to be good news for state environmental regulators. In particular, it clarifies how cap and trade relates to what lawyers call the dormant commerce clause — a …
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CONTINUE READINGMt 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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CONTINUE READINGCourt Doesn’t Cast Much Doubt on the Constitutionality of Michigan’s Renewable Portfolio Standard
Thanks to Ann Carlson for pointing out the significant decision recently issued by 7th Circuit Court of Appeals related to allocating the cost for new electric transmission lines and for so concisely describing its complicated fact pattern. But I have to respectfully disagree with Ann’s suggestion that this decision has cast any meaningful doubt on …
CONTINUE READINGThe State Senate’s proposal for CEQA reform
The State Senate recently passed its version of CEQA reform. Having looked over the bill, it’s much better than I feared. What seems to be the most important change is a move towards adopting standard setting in CEQA – i.e., making generalized determinations about what levels of certain kinds of impacts are “significant” such that …
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CONTINUE READINGWhy the Warming Plateau Can’t Disprove Global Warming
The NY TImes has a thoughtful appraisal of the warming plateau — the fact that global temperatures rose until about fifteen years ago and have wobbled around the same level since then. I think the Times has it about right, but I’d like to point to a less obvious reason why the plateau should not …
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CONTINUE READINGCan We Replace HFCs?
What was supposed to be an informal meeting between President Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping has yielded something substantive: an agreement to include hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) under the Montreal Protocol, and thus an agreement by both nations to reduce their use: As some environmental analysts had hoped, President Obama and President Xi Jinping of China found room to maneuver on global warming …
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CONTINUE READINGThe Cost of Carbon Revisited
In 2010, an inter-agency task force provided a series of estimates of the “social cost of carbon” to guide government cost-benefit analyses. The estimates vary with the discount rate and the date. For instance, using a 5% discount rate, it would be worth spending hardly anything — only $4.70 — to eliminate a ton of CO2 …
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CONTINUE READINGAlex Hall’s Work on Climate Change and Los Angeles
My UCLA colleague Alex Hall has developed a model for predicting future climate conditions across Los Angeles areas such as Venice vs. Pasadena. Take a look at Tables 2 and 3 of this report. As an economist, I’d like to make a point for lawyers to think about. Take a look at Table 3 …
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CONTINUE READINGCan We Learn About Climate Change Adaptation Efforts Today From Historical Lessons from 500 Years Ago?
I am married to an economic historian and I have co-written a Princeton Press book on economic history but I do not believe that long run history is relevant for thinking about how we will adapt to climate change. In this blog post, I discuss recent work by Geoffrey Parker as he sketches stories from hundreds …
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