Climate Change
Charter Cities Offer Climate Change Adaptation Benefits
Brandon Fuller and I have published a short piece arguing that another benefit of charter cities is to increase the set of coping strategies for people who live in less developed countries and face new climate shocks due to global warming. Starting with my 2010 book Climatopolis, I have consistently argued that global greenhouse gas …
Continue reading “Charter Cities Offer Climate Change Adaptation Benefits”
CONTINUE READINGHeat Waves, Droughts, and the Energy System
According to the IPCC, it “is very likely that hot extremes, heat waves, and heavy precipitation events will continue to become more frequent.” For instance, by midcentury, the number of heat wave days in Los Angeles is expected to at least double over the late twentieth century, and quadrupling is expected by the end of …
Continue reading “Heat Waves, Droughts, and the Energy System”
CONTINUE READINGClimate “skepticism,” ideology, and sincerity
There’s an interesting discussion about a whole lot of things — for example, the sincerity of climate scientists and think tanks, the behavior of scientists, the relative funding of “skeptics” and climate scientists and others who believe climate change is happening and is caused by human activity — between my colleague Ann Carlson and Professor …
Continue reading “Climate “skepticism,” ideology, and sincerity”
CONTINUE READINGObama’s Dormant Carbon Tax
In many respects, public subsidies for clean technology research and development, public investment in urban redevelopment, and elaborate cap-and-trade programs are all essentially clunky political substitutes for a carbon tax. If we priced carbon accurately to reflect its true cost to society, in terms of public and environmental health impacts (aka “externalities”), much of this …
Continue reading “Obama’s Dormant Carbon Tax”
CONTINUE READINGPeter Gleick and the Heartland Institute Expose
Jonathan focused last week, appropriately in my view, on the ethics of the way in which Peter Gleick got documents from the climate-denying Heartland Institute. His conclusion is that as a scientist Gleick’s deceptions to get the documents were unethical. A new column in The Guardian comes out in the opposite place, arguing that Gleick …
Continue reading “Peter Gleick and the Heartland Institute Expose”
CONTINUE READINGStopping High Speed Sprawl
California Governor Jerry Brown has doubled down on his support for the state’s proposed high speed rail system, despite the uncertainty about how to pay for it and growing public opposition. But who can blame him? If the rail system does get built, it will be the defining infrastructure project in the state for generations …
Continue reading “Stopping High Speed Sprawl”
CONTINUE READINGExploring Policies to Promote Local Renewables
Last July, California Governor Jerry Brown held a conference, hosted by the Luskin Center at UCLA, to launch his initiative to achieve 12,000 megawatts of local renewable energy projects in California by 2020. Local renewables, often called distributed generation, are projects no larger than 20 megawatts located close to customer demand. Berkeley Law’s Center for …
Continue reading “Exploring Policies to Promote Local Renewables”
CONTINUE READINGPreviewing a VERY Big Week for Environmental Law in the Courts
UPDATE: The Associated Press reports that late Sunday, February 26th, U.S. District Court Judge Carl Barbier announced a one-week postponement of the trial in the BP oil spill case that had been scheduled to begin the next day. The postponement is reportedly due to substantial progress that has been made in marathon settlement talks that …
Continue reading “Previewing a VERY Big Week for Environmental Law in the Courts”
CONTINUE READINGPeter Gleick, the Heartland Institute, and Scientific Ethics
The Heartland Institute is a climate denial shop well-funded by fossil fuel interests and standard right-wing extremist foundations, which has underwritten attacks on climate scientists and has plans to disrupt authentic climate science education in K-12 classrooms. Peter Gleick is one of the most respected scientific researchers in the world, who has done extremely …
Continue reading “Peter Gleick, the Heartland Institute, and Scientific Ethics”
CONTINUE READINGLegal Planet Takes Over the Yale Law Journal
Along with Dan, I also have a response to the Ewing/Kysar paper at YLJ Online. (For those of your keeping score at home, two out of three commissioned responses were Legal Planet bloggers: we win!). It should surprise no one that while Dan’s is elegant and technical, mine is cranky and dyspeptic. Here’s the abstract: This …
Continue reading “Legal Planet Takes Over the Yale Law Journal”
CONTINUE READING