Climate Change

Explaining EPA’s Authority Under the Clean Air Act to Address Climate Change

In a new white paper by the Center for Progressive Reform (CPR), Amy Sinden and I try to  clear up some misconceptions about climate change and the Clean Air Act. Critics of EPA maintain that the Clean Air Act is somehow an inappropriate tool to address greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and that EPA should be …

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Energy and Development

Readers of this blog may be interested in a new blog by my ERG colleague Dan Kammen.  Dan is currently on leave from Berkeley to head the Clean Tech effort at the World Bank as the Bank’s Chief Technical Specialist for Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency. Recent subjects range from cook stoves in Africa to …

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Republicans Hate Their Grandchildren

Eleven days ago, I was relieved that the Administration stood firm on anti-EPA riders, but asked, “what will the level of EPA funding be?  If Congress and the White House agree to serious cuts that starve the agency of necessary personnel, then the absence of a rider is a Pyrrhic victory.” Well, now we know …

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Will AB 32 Regulations Move Ahead Despite the Court Ruling?

We’ve extensively covered the litigation over California’s landmark climate change law, AB 32.  Now, per the Clean Energy Report, CARB might be able to move ahead with the cap-and-trade regulations anyway: the trial court might very well stay its decision pending appeal, which is not unheard of, and according to the state’s attorneys, occurs automatically upon …

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Another Sane Conservative on Climate

Nancy Stiles is the new Republican State Senator from Portsmouth, New Hampshire.  She believes in low government spending and decentralization.  Libertarians like her. But importantly, she seems to have not been infected with the climate denial crazy of many in her party.  While Republicans in the state Assembly have voted to have New Hampshire secede …

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How NOT to Report on Climate Change

My eye couldn’t help but be drawn to this headline from the Times of India: ‘Nearly 80% of mango crop ruined by climate change’. Wow, I thought.  Even for a pessimist like myself, that’s quite a lot.  And how did they determine that?  Then I looked at the story.  Here’s the lede: Alphonso, the king …

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Climate Denial Legislators Struck by Scientific “Friendly Fire”

Paul Krugman has a great column about the so-called climate science hearing last week: So the joke begins like this: An economist, a lawyer and a professor of marketing walk into a room. What’s the punch line? They were three of the five “expert witnesses” Republicans called for last week’s Congressional hearing on climate science. …

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Environmental Justice and Adaptation to Climate Change

I’m beginning to wonder whether we need an “Endangered People Act” to ensure that the most vulnerable get the protection they need from climate change impacts. Climate change will disproportionately affect vulnerable individuals and poorer regions and countries, as I discuss in a recent paper comparing adaptation efforts in China, England, and the U.S.  For …

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Good News from the Budget Negotiations?

It is, of course, absurd that the House, Senate, and White House are even negotiating about budget cuts in the midst of the Great Contraction.  But it does seem that the environmental community has gotten something of a win — at least if you believe the Senators most closely involved in the negotiations: Under intense …

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Conservatives and climate change

Dan notes, in a recent post, the ways in which potential Republican presidential candidates are backwards-pedaling on whatever statements they might once have made supporting action to address climate change.  (Climate change is apparently the new former mistriss — we’ve all flirted in the past with things we now regret.)  Former Congressman Bob Inglis (R-S.C.) spoke at UCLA …

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