Climate Change
Fossil of the Day: Canada takes a commanding lead
Canada has taken a commanding lead here in Durban in the Fossil of the Day awards. The award is given daily at the climate change negotiations for the country doing its best to impede, stall or otherwise oppose progress in climate negotiations. The award is judged by 700+ member organizations of Climate Action Network. In …
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CONTINUE READINGChina’s Climate Change White Paper
China’s State Council issued a white paper entitled “China’s Policies and Actions for Addressing Climate Change” last week in advance of the climate negotiations in Durban. As several press reports have already pointed out, the white paper offers little new information, but is rather an effort to gather all of China’s main climate initiatives in …
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CONTINUE READINGThe (VERY) Uneasy Case for Nuclear Power
Anyone who is serious about combatting climate change must be serious about considering nuclear power. Fission generation produces virtually no emissions, and given the difficulties we will have in reducing the world’s carbon footprint, to ignore nuclear power is to my mind irresponsible. But “considering” nuclear power hardly means adopting it. Nuclear power plants are …
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CONTINUE READINGLocal Clean Energy Policies
With cities and counties struggling to emerge from the down economy, clean energy development has been an economic and environmental bright spot. As Berkeley Law and UCLA Law discuss in the 2009 report “In Our Backyard,” California possesses numerous opportunities to deploy solar and wind energy facilities in existing urbanized areas, such as along highways …
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CONTINUE READINGThe “African COP”
Some of the expectations for this year’s Conference of Parties of the international climate treaty, the UNFCCC, related to its host country, South Africa. Many had hoped that the COP’s location in Africa this year would help to highlight the serious issue of climate change impacts in developing countries, often the least responsible for climate …
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CONTINUE READINGKivalina and the Courts: Justice for America’s First Climate Refugees?
It’s hard not to sympathize with the Native Alaskan inhabitants of the Village of Kivalina. The 400 residents of Kivalina, a thin peninsula of land in Alaska jutting into the Chuckchi Sea north of the Arctic Circle, have the dubious distinction of being among the first climate refugees in the U.S. Their town is literally …
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CONTINUE READINGPoll Results on Cap and Trade
I thought people might be interested in the results of our poll of readers on cap-and-trade: California has just adopted a cap and trade system. All things considered, do you think that cap and trade is the best strategy for controlling greenhouse gases? No, a carbon tax would be better. 56% Yes, cap and trade …
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CONTINUE READINGThe Local Role for Promoting Energy Efficient Homes and Businesses
One of the most cost-effective ways to fight climate change is to make homes and businesses more energy efficient. Yet this is also one of the most difficult goals to achieve. In UC Berkeley and UCLA Law’s 2010 report “Saving Energy,” we found the key barriers to be the highly individualized nature of retrofitting buildings …
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CONTINUE READINGGingrich & The Environment
Given Newt Gingrich’s current spurt in the polls, it’s worth taking a bit of a closer look at his environmental views. He favors dismantling EPA, which should make him popular with the tea party. But apparently he has problems in that quarter: The reaction from some conservative commentators was swift and harsh. “Intellectually incoherent,” said …
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CONTINUE READINGHow Cities and Counties Can Improve Public Transit
Flashy and expensive new transit projects, such as the Los Angeles subway or San Francisco’s proposed Central Subway, get a lot of media attention. But cities and counties have a lot of discretion to improve their existing public transit systems in sometimes relatively low-cost ways. The benefits, as we discuss in a UCLA / Berkeley …
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