Climate Change

Latest polling data on climate change and political parties

The Center for Climate Change Communication at George Mason University is out with its latest poll today, on “Politics and Global Warming: Democrats, Republicans, Independents and the Tea Party.”  The poll examines the difference in views among members of those four groups on a variety of climate- and energy-related topics. First thing to note is …

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Two weeks of protest against Keystone XL ends Saturday

Two weeks of civil disobedience and protest against the Keystone XL pipeline ends this Saturday (Sept. 3), with a rally and final sit-in. Over 1,000 people have been arrested, including my former professor , Gus Speth. The protestors want President Obama to deny a permit to construct a pipeline to bring oil from Canadian tar …

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Is Cap and Trade Unfair?

I should probably start by putting my cards on the table.  I’m not really an advocate of cap and   trade as compared with other forms of regulation.  What I care about is getting effective carbon restrictions in place, whether they take the form of cap and trade, a carbon tax, industry-wide regulations, or something …

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A Judicial Win for PACE Clean Energy Financing

Finally, some good news from the courts for advocates of PACE financing for energy efficiency and renewables.  Federal Judge Claudia Wilken in the Northern District of California issued a ruling late Friday on the Federal Housing Finance Authority’s (FHFA) motion to dismiss a challenge from the Sierra Club, Placer and Sonoma Counties, Palm Desert, and …

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The Environmental Issue in the Presidential Race

With the partial exception of Mitt Romney, all of the Republican presidential candidates are negative about EPA.  According to the NY TImes, Opposition to regulation and skepticism about climate change have become tenets of Republican orthodoxy, but they are embraced with extraordinary intensity this year because of the faltering economy, high fuel prices, the Tea …

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Rick Perry Should Be Confined to a Padded Room, Chapter One

Governor Rick “Crotch” Perry is somewhat of an expert at saying inane things, a trend that has accelerated since he declared his Presidential candidacy.  He flirts with secession, he accuses the Fed Chairman of treason, he was against cervical cancer before he was for it, he wants to repeal the 17th Amendment, he claims that …

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Is USTR Trying to Increase China’s Carbon Emissions?

Our friends Daniel Firger and Michael Gerrard at Columbia Law School’s Center for Climate Change Law have written a useful new paper analyzing two important pending WTO climate cases.  Of these, the more important appears to be DS 419, in which the United States is challenging China’s wind energy subsidies. Firger and Gerrard note that …

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California Works to Promote Energy Efficiency Retrofits

California has much to brag about when it comes to energy efficiency. Per capita, the state’s residents use far less energy than our national counterparts while enjoying an equal or better standard of living, thanks to energy efficiency standards developed in the 1970s: But the state is committed to doing better. Last week, I was …

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Climate, Energy, and the Presidential Race

Michele Bachmann ripped into Tim Pawlenty last night for his past support of cap-and-trade.  “When you were governor of Minnesota, you implemented cap and trade in our state…. you said the era of small government was over. That sounds a lot more like Barack Obama if you ask me.” Several of the other candidates have …

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Climate Deniers: Stupid or Evil?

It’s an interesting psychological question, actually.  Fox News’ climate change “expert,” the appropriately-named Joe Bastardi, claims that the theory of anthropogenic climate change cannot be true because it contradicts what we call the 1st law of thermodynamics. Energy can be neither created nor destroyed. So to look for input of energy into the atmosphere, you have …

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