Events

Why Do People Care So Much About Nuclear Accidents?

Well, for obvious reasons.  But Ann, citing Will Saletan, raises a good question: why are people so much more concerned about nuclear accidents than, say oil spills or other environmental disasters?  If we accept Saletan’s figures of “direct fatalities” being 18 times more dangerous for oil production per energy unit (and there are reasons not …

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California’s Delta Stewardship Council Gets Down to Business

Today California’s Delta Stewardship Council begins its deliberations on a Delta Plan that promises to be a big part of the answer to one of that state’s most pressing environmental questions: can California’s Delta be saved? Creation of the Delta Stewardship Council was a key element of landmark 2009 California legislation designed to address the …

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What If They Gave a Climate Summit and Nobody Came?

Last year about this time, everyone was excited about Copenhagen.  UCLA Law School even sent its own delegation.  President Obama was going to come.  It was the biggest thing in climate since Kyoto — maybe bigger, since now the US had an administration that believes in science. Now?  Not so much.  The coverage of Cancun …

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Funny, It Doesn’t Look Bluish

The initial results in California last night make it seem like a sane drop of blue in the country.  Jerry Brown won for Governor; Barbara Boxer was re-elected; and Proposition 23, which would have reversed the state’s landmark climate change law, was resoundingly defeated.  Voters also approved Proposition 25, which allows the state budget to be …

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The BP Deepwater Horizon Blowout and the Social and Environmental Erosion of the Louisiana Coast

  In a lecture that I gave last week at the University of Minnesota, I discussed how the Louisiana Coast was under grave threat from erosion, rising seas, and pollution even before the explosion on the British Petroleum Deepwater Horizon platform. Whole communities have vanished under the rising water, and the livelihoods and communities of …

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The New Yorker on Climate Legislation

Read the whole thing.  Really.  Because if you don’t, and all you do is read the subtitle — How the Senate and the White House missed their best chance to deal with climate change — or just read the tag line — “Everybody is going to be thinking about whether Barack Obama was the James …

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Major Berkeley Conference on Climate and Energy

Today and tomorrow, Berkeley is hosting a major conference featuring leading scientists, engineers, and policy analysts.  The keynote speakers include: Ralph Cicerone, President, National Academy of Sciences Chris Field, Co-chair, IPCC Working Group 2: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability Arun Majumdar, Director, Advanced Research Projects Agency–Energy, DOE A live webcast is available here.

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State AGs Ready to Attack Constitutionality of California’s AB 32

An important postscript to my earlier post regarding Berkeley Law’s/CLEE’s newly-published white paper on Proposition 23. That’s the California initiative measure that, if approved by voters this November, would suspend implementation of that state’s Global Warming Solutions Act, better known as AB 32. The San Francisco Chronicle reports today that the Attorneys General of Alabama, …

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Travel Is Broadening–2010 Edition

Having just returned from a trip to Northern Europe, a couple of experiences resonate with me that, I hope, are worthy of sharing here. The first relates to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, British Petroleum, and the distinct ways in which BP’s role and responsibility for the spill are viewed, depending on one’s geographical roots. …

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World Environment Day

It may well have escaped your notice — I have to admit it had escaped mine — but today is World Environment Day.  UNEP has chosen Rwanda as the main site for this year’s celebration, which is one reason you might not have known about this if you’re in North America.  You may also be …

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