Climate Change

Op-ed on local renewable energy production

Assemblywoman Nancy Skinner (D-Berkeley) and I authored an op-ed in the San Francisco Chronicle today that outlines steps California can take to boost significant renewable energy production, such as from wind and solar resources, from our large rooftops, highway land, aqueduct infrastructure, and other big spaces close to consumers.  These recommendations were informed by a …

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Early endangerment finding fallout

As Dan discussed here, on Monday EPA finalized its finding that greenhouse gas emissions endanger public health and welfare. The new rule won’t be effective until 30 days after its publication in the Federal Register, but it is already generating spin and promises of litigation. Even before the final finding was issued, the Center for …

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“Oil and politics mix well, but I’m not sure if oil and science mix well”

By Alexa Engelman, UCLA Law delegation — one in a series of posts from COP 15 in Copenhagen: “Oil and politics mix well, but I’m not sure if oil and science mix well.”  So stated IPPC Chair Rajendra Pachauri when asked by reporters in a session at the Bella Center Tuesday morning about the hacked emails from …

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An Important New Working Paper Series

The Energy and Resources Group (ERG) at UC Berkeley has begun a new series of working papers.  The series will feature new research on energy, sustainability, and social justice. The first paper to be posted is “Measuring Emissions Against An Alternative Future: Fundamental Flaws in the Structure of the Kyoto Protocol’s Clean Development Mechanism.”  The …

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Climategate: Did the Russians do it?

The “Climategate” story gets even weirder. New Scientist reports (picking up the story from The Independent) that anonymous sources in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change think the Russian secret service is responsible for hacking into e-mail at the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit. The reported evidence? [T]he hacked data apparently surfaced on …

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Global cooling? Not!

Climate change deniers (I can’t bring myself to write “denialists,” which is not a word recognized by my dictionary) have made a lot of the fact that 1998 was warmer than the years that immediately followed, as if a warming trend could only be real if every year was warmer than the next. Of course …

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COP 15 Kicks Off!

By Maya Kuttan, UCLA Law delegation — first in a series of posts from COP15: Today we were inundated with weighty rhetoric and a shiny vision of what the future could hold.  The COP 15 opening was inspiring and seemed to focus on influencing developed nations, like the US.  The conference started with a short film …

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The Other Shoe Drops

EPA has now officially recognized what climate scientists have been telling us for years: climate change is real, and we’re the cause.

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Winning Hearts and Minds on Climate Change: Climategate, EPA Announcement and Copenhagen

Proponents of rigorous regulation of greenhouse gas emissions finally have the international stage today as all attention shifts to Copenhagen.  And the EPA has chosen this opening day to announce the finalization of  its finding that greenhouse gases endanger public health and welfare and therefore must be regulated under the Clean Air Act.  Moreover 56 …

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Off to Copenhagen…

Tomorrow afternoon, the UCLA Law / Emmett Center on Climate Change delegation to COP 15 departs from LAX for Copenhagen.  I’ll be there with six terrific law school students, all of whom have backgrounds in climate and the environment and who have been studying the history of the Framework Convention on Climate Change in preparation for …

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