Climate Change

Literally Trashing the Environment

No, not another rap on Joe Biden.  The world literally wastes an awful lot of food, notes the International Herald Tribune: Between 1.2 billion and 2 billion tons of the 4 billion tons of food produced around the world every year never gets eaten, according to a new survey by a group of British engineers. …

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Stephen Colbert is a National Treasure

Like Tom Tomorrow.   Click here for his must watch clip from Monday’s show.   http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/423268/january-28-2013/the-word—the-new-abnormal Colbert nails conservative views on climate change.  First, deny.  Second, when the facts belie denial, accept but refuse to acknowledge human contributions.  Finally, throw up your hands and say that even if it’s human-caused we can’t do anything about it …

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Environmental Law and Policy Events for Couch Potatoes

UC Berkeley and UCLA School of Law’s joint Climate Change and Business Research Initiative has produced a number of public events featuring experts on pressing environmental law and policy issues. We now have on-line video recordings of many of them, for those of you who prefer not to leave the comfort of your home or …

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California cap-and-trade offsets challenge rejected

Breaking: California has successfully weathered (at least in the lower court) another challenge to its cap-and-trade program.  A state court has affirmed ARB’s significant discretion to design offsets protocols that rely on standardized additionality mechanisms, denying a petition that had sought to invalidate those protocols.  Argus has the first story on this that I’ve seen. …

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A Case of Intellectual Bankruptcy

It pains me to say this about a fellow alum of my high school, but George Will has apparently reached the point of intellectual insolvency.   A case in point: his recent Washington Post op. ed. about climate change. Will begins by setting up a straw man.  He slams climate advocates like Obama for supposedly basing …

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Sunstein on Climate Change

Should the U.S. take action on climate change prior to a global treaty?  Eric Posner and Cass Sunstein argued against unilteral action in a well-known paper.  The argument received more extensive discussion in a book by Eric Posner and David Weisbach (with Sunstein dropping out because of government service).  I’ve argued (see this paper) that …

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Call for Cabinet Nominations!

With all the heat generated by the nominations for the Secretaries of State and Defense, it is easy to overlook that President Obama must make nominations for four agencies critical to environmental policy: EPA, Interior, Energy, and USTR.  And it says something that there do not seem to be obvious, strong candidates that environmentalists can …

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Bicameral Congressional Task Force on Climate Change Formed Today

In the days that have followed the President’s strong statement on climate change in his second inaugural, many have speculated about what role Congress will play, if any, in moving forward on this issue.  (See Greenwire’s story here, for example, covering the question and writing about signs from WH press secretary Jay Carney that the President “will pursue both …

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Can We Make a Deal on Keystone XL?

Well, no, we probably can’t.  But President Obama might be well advised to try. Republicans are currently trying to force the White House into approving the pipeline.  Nebraska’s Governor recently flip-flopped and supported Keystone, saying now that he trusts TransCanada to do the necessary environmental work to protect the state’s econoloigcally sensitive Sandhill region.  In …

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