Climate Change

Passage to India

Just arrived in Hyderabad, India, for the RAND/India School of Business conference on entrepreneurship.  After that, I make my way west to Bombay, and then north to Delhi, where on June 19th, the new Jindal Global Law School will sponsor a major conference on climate. It’s (sometimes) nice going to conferences, but I am also hoping to find …

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The China Syndrome

After her trip to China, Speaker Pelosi was upbeat about the Chinese attitude toward climate change, YahooGreen reports: US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Tuesday expressed high hopes of cooperation between the United State and China, the two biggest emitters of greenhouse gases, ahead of

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Hummer to China

At the close of last week’s Congressional delegation trip to China to discuss, among other things, climate change commitments, Rep. Edward Markey had this to say about the upcoming Copenhagen talks and efforts to convince the Chinese to agree to GHG caps (as reported in the NYT): “This is going to be one of the most …

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Climate Refugees

The NY Times had an important article yesterday about the issue of climate refugees.  Because climate change poses an existential threat to some nations and a threat to international stability elsewhere, it appears that the U.N. is inching closer to making climate change a security issue under the jurisdiction of the Security Council.   Since the …

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Idle Chatter

WBUR’s Here and Now radio show recently covered the story of George Pakenham, the self-named “Verdant Vigilante.”  Pakenham roams the streets of New York City engaging in citizen enforcement of the city’s anti-idling law.  The law, which has been on the books in various forms since 1971, prohibits idling for greater than 3 minutes (1 …

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Judge Sotomayor’s Environmental Record

Now that President Obama has nominated her for a seat on the U.S. Supreme Court, U.S. Court of Appeals Judge Sonia Sotomayor’s record as a federal court judge will be under the microscope. Political pundits, legal scholars and advocacy groups from across the political spectrum will all be scrutinizing Sotomayor’s extensive record as a federal …

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Sec. Chu pushes cool roofs – and Fox pushes back

Perhaps not surprisingly, given his long tenure at Lawrence Berkeley National Labs, Energy Secretary Steven Chu is making news for pushing what many think is a “triple play” climate change winner: cool roofs.  As LBNL researchers have shown, making roofs more heat-reflective cools the earth dramatically, reduces energy consumption (by reducing air conditioning), and makes cities more healthful …

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Global warming winners? (oceans edition)

By now it is widely recognized that ocean warming and acidification caused by rising CO2 levels will adversely affect many organisms, especially those that depend on calcium carbonate shells. But there may be winners as well. Rebecca Gooding and a group from the University of British Columbia report in the Proceedings of the National Academy …

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Should State Cap and Trade Programs Be Preempted?

My general sense is that most environmentalists disfavor federal preemption of state climate change policy making.  States have led the way on progressive climate policy during the eight years of federal inaction under Bush, enacting renewable portfolio standards (29 states), greenhouse gas emissions caps (covering more than half the states), utility performance standards (four states), …

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Climate bill is out of committee (thanks in part to speed reader?)

Yesterday evening, by a 33-25 vote, the House Energy and Commerce Committee passed the Waxman-Markey climate and energy bill (full text here – all 946 pages of it). This quick analysis by Kate Sheppard at Grist.org is useful.  This New York Times article discusses the opposition to the bill from the agricultural sector, and the likely difficulties that …

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