Climate Change
Exploring Climate Change and the Law
Looking for a way to pass the time over the long Labor Day weekend? Want to learn more about the legal and policy dimension of climate change? Check out Berkeley’s course on climate law, now available here on YouTube. Scholars discuss everything from the economics of climate change to WTO issues raised by biofuels ,and …
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CONTINUE READINGSacramento debates renewable energy, jobs
With Ken posting about California’s renewable energy goals and ways to meet them, I’ll point out the battle waging this week in the state legislature over SB 14, a bill that would legislate and broaden the 33%-RPS-by-2020 Ken discussed here (currently derived from an executive order). This from the LA Times: Under the measure, by Sen. …
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CONTINUE READINGThe Royal Society’s geoengineering report
We had a flurry of posts on geoengineering a while back (see here, here, here, and here). If you want to learn more about geoengineering, a great resource is this report, just issued by the Royal Society. It clearly explains the background, the approaches being proposed (which divide broadly into technologies for removing greenhouse gases …
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CONTINUE READINGCan EPA kick-start climate legislation?
The San Francisco Chronicle this morning quotes EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson as saying that her agency will soon finalize its greenhouse endangerment finding (notwithstanding the Chamber of Commerce’s absurd demand for an adjudicatory hearing). As the story says, “Supporters of climate change legislation are hoping the threat of EPA-mandated limits will spur congressional action.” Although …
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CONTINUE READING“Removing the Roadblocks” op-ed
Assemblyman Jared Huffman (D-San Rafael) and I had an op-ed published in yesterday’s San Francisco Chronicle that outlined steps to remove the barriers to more sustainable development. The op-ed is based on findings from the report that the environmental law programs at UCLA and UC Berkeley and the California Attorney General’s Office released last week, …
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CONTINUE READINGThe Fire This Time
Here in southern California, we are currently living through our annual late August-early September ritual of wildfires. In the San Fernando Valley, where I live, the air is heavy with smoke, and people are staying inside. It was worse in Pasadena, where I attend a Quaker meeting, and where the houses of several Friends are …
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CONTINUE READINGInsurance in a Complex World
Roger Cook and Carolyn Kousky make some intriguing points in an article in the Summer issue of Resources. They discuss three problems confronting insurance companies, all of them probably exacerbated by climate change: fat tails, tail dependence, and micro-correlations. Although the names may not be self-explanatory, these are phenomena with great significance for society’s management …
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CONTINUE READINGThe Kennedy seat
It may be gauche to admit to worrying about this so soon after Ted Kennedy’s death, but the conversations have already begun: How much harder will it be to get to 60 votes on healthcare reform and, more relevant here, climate change legislation without his seat filled? Massachusetts procedures for finding a new senator, and …
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CONTINUE READINGQ (circa 2100): Whatever Happened to Kansas? A: It Burned Up.
The Nature Conservancy has released a projection of business-as-usual climate impacts, which shows particularly heavy impacts in Kansas, Nebraska, and Iowa. The predictions are fairly grim. The analysis is based on averaging model results for IPCC Scenarios B1 assumes a (decrease in emission rates over the next century for a total concentration of 538ppm by …
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CONTINUE READINGUCLA/Berkeley Law & Attorney General’s Office release report recommending policies to encourage sustainable real estate development
For those of you who haven’t memorized the AB 32 scoping plan pie chart that details the sources of greenhouse gas emissions in California by sector, “vehicle miles traveled” (or, as lay folks call it, “driving”) represents the single largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in the state — almost forty percent. We can hope …
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