Climate Change
EPA stands by endangerment finding
EPA today issued its response to the 10 petitions that have been filed asking it to reconsider its December 2009 determination that greenhouse gas emissions cause or contribute to air pollution that may reasonably be expected to endanger public health or welfare. To no one’s surprise, the agency is standing by its earlier finding. As …
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CONTINUE READINGEnergy storage is key to the success of renewables in California
UPDATE: The bill summary linked below from the California Energy Storage Alliance actually summarizes a former version of the bill. The current bill version, linked below and here, is the best source now. The current version imposes no percentage mandate on utilities. Thanks to Ethan Elkind for pointing that out. UCLA Law and Berkeley Law recently …
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CONTINUE READINGIndirect Land Use Change and Biofuels
Biofuels are a promising way to reduce carbon emissions, but they have a potential side-effect: indirect land use change (ILUC). ILUC is more serious for some fuels than others, but it’s a possibility with any biofuel except perhaps algae grown in tanks in the desert. The logic of ILUC seems undeniable: because demand for food …
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CONTINUE READINGSenate Fails to Act So What’s New in the World of Geoengineering?
With the depressing news that the Senate will not go forward on a climate bill, I thought it worth revisiting a question I posed a year and a half ago: is geoengineering inevitable? If we assume that U.S. leadership is crucial to cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent over the next forty years, and …
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CONTINUE READINGClimate Integrity
A major British report has been issued relating to the famous pirated emails from East Anglia. The report concludes: Climate science is a matter of such global importance, that the highest standards of honesty, rigour and openness are needed in its conduct. On the specific allegations made against the behaviour of CRU scientists, we find …
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CONTINUE READINGAdios, Federal Climate Change Legislation
We hardly knew ye (in the Senate, anyway). Reports indicate that Senate Democrats will be scaling back their energy legislation to a bill that addresses oil well leaks and energy efficiency, but nothing on carbon emission more generally. In many ways, the failure of comprehensive energy reform can be traced to two things: 1) health …
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CONTINUE READINGHow To Increase Deployment of Energy Storage To Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions
The white papers keep coming. Today, UC Berkeley and UCLA Schools of Law released a new report, “The Power of Energy Storage: How to Increase Deployment in California to Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions,” to examine policies that California and federal leaders can implement to increase the state’s energy storage capacity. As California seeks to expand …
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CONTINUE READINGNew White Paper Released on Local Government Land Use Planning and Climate Change
UC Berkeley and UCLA Schools of Law released a new white paper today called “Plan for the Future: How Local Governments Can Help Implement California’s New Land Use and Climate Change Legislation.” The paper looks at steps that policy-makers and local government leaders can take to improve land use planning in California to meet the …
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CONTINUE READINGThe environmental community mourns the passing of climate science giant Stephen Schneider
Dr. Stephen Schneider, the pioneering Stanford climate scientist whose passion for the topic and concern for the earth’s future led him to become an outspoken public advocate for the role of scientific evidence and scientific judgment in shaping climate policy, has died at age 65 of an apparent heart attack. Andy Revkin of the New …
CONTINUE READINGEconomists against Prop 23
As Ann has reported, California’s global warming law, AB 32, is under attack. Proposition 23 on the November ballot would suspend AB 32 until unemployment in the state falls below 5.5% for four consecutive quarters (currently, unemployment in California is over 12%). Opponents of environmental regulation often argue that too much regulation kills jobs and …
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