Climate Change

Shocking News About the Fossil Fuel Industry

Guess what? The fossil fuel industry has been deliberately lying to the public about climate change.  According to the Washington Post: “The Global Climate Coalition, a group of representatives of the oil, auto and coal industries, spent years telling the public that the link between human activity and climate change was too uncertain to justify …

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Are we too obsessed with climate change?

Slate has an interesting piece by Brendan Borrell arguing that the current laser-like focus on climate change may be getting in the way of effective conservation measures. As he tells it, being green today “is all about greenhouse gases,” to the point that people have forgotten about plain vanilla habitat destruction. That, he thinks, is …

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California Adopts Low-Carbon Fuel Standard

Good. The California Air Resources Board has adopted the nation’s first mandate to lower the carbon in fuel. As these things go, it’s pretty mild: a 10% reduction in carbon footprint by 2020. That hasn’t stopped the oil industry from complaining, of course, stating that CARB is “moving too fast.” When will it not be …

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Cars, Obama and Climate Change

There’s big news coming out of Washington and Detroit this week about the fate of U.S. automakers.  Rumors surfaced yesterday that G.M. will furlough its U.S. factories for most of the summer due to declines in auto sales.  And the Obama Treasury Department is said to be pressuring Chrysler to prepare for bankruptcy, to be filed as …

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Flexing Obama’s administrative muscle (& a victory on home furnaces)

Just after the election, the environmental group Earthjustice published a list of six easy things the Obama administration could do to help the environment.  On the list was the suggestion that Obama back off from defending Bush-era failures to ramp up the efficiency of home furnaces–a topic that sounds narrow but has remarkable implications for saving …

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Climate Mitigation and U.S. Self-Interest

Jody Freeman and my colleague Andrew Guzman have posted an important paper, “Sea Walls are Not Enough.” The paper is particularly significant because Jody is now a senior White House advisor on climate policy.  The gist of the paper is this: We demonstrate that even if one accepts that the premises of the climate change …

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Waxman-Markey hearings

As Dan mentioned in his post yesterday, the House Energy and Commerce Committee is holding hearings through Friday on the Waxman-Markey climate change bill, dubbed The American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009.  Climate Progress has the schedule here. The hearings can be viewed live or after the fact at the Committee’s website, here.

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Getting to the root of recurring water conflicts

This post is co-authored by A. Dan Tarlock, Distinguished Professor of Law at Chicago-Kent College of Law, and cross-posted by permission from the Island Press Eco-Compass blog. The western United States is characterized by highly variable and seasonal rainfall patterns. To deal with the constant threat of drought, the West relies on intensively managed water …

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Climate Change Legislation: Is the Train (Finally) Leaving the Station?

I posted yesterday about Rep. Boehner’s bone-headed statement about climate change.  My first thought was that this was completely idiotic, making a childish argument that even George W. Bush would have scorned.    The fact that some CO2 is normal and even necessary proves nothing about what happens when concentrations go beyond the normal level: salt …

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Flunking Climate 101

John Boehner, the House Republican leader, explains his view of climate change to George Stephanopoulos: George, the idea that carbon dioxide is a carcinogen, that it’s harmful to our environment is almost comical. Every time we exhale, we exhale carbon dioxide. Every cow in the world, uh, well, you know when they do what they …

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