Politics

BREAKING NEWS: Another West Coast Win for PACE Energy Financing

Almost a year later, California wins again in the effort to reverse a federal agency’s 2010 decision that decimated PACE, a promising financing program for residential energy efficiency and renewable investments. Federal District Court Judge Claudia Wilken ruled today that the Federal Housing Finance Authority (FHFA) violated the Administrative Procedure Act’s (APA) notice-and-comment requirement when …

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Mitt Romney, Prisoner of the Tea Party

Just about any electoral map will tell you that Iowa is a swing state, and that Mitt Romney needs to win it if he hopes to capture the Presidency. Just about any political observer in Iowa will tell you that the wind energy tax credit, enacted as part of President Obama’s stimulus package (but with …

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California’s Groundwater Crisis: Time to Adjudicate

As Rick pointed out last week, the University of Texas has found that California’s groundwater resources are “being depleted at an alarming rate” and the state’s use of them is completely unsustainable.  The Texas study follows up on Rhead Enion’s study last year issued by the Emmett Center, which pointed out that California is one …

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Californians and the Environment: PPIC’s New Survey Results

The Public Policy Institute of California this week released the results of its 12th annual “Californians and the Environment” survey.  PPIC, a non-partisan think tank, always seems to be generating thought-provoking and cutting-edge scholarship focusing on the nation-state of California. Its latest environmental survey, based on recent polling of 2500 Californians, continues that tradition. The …

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Destroying the Land in Order to Save It

In the middle of the worst drought in decades, the climate denying House of Ayn Rand Representatives was so intent on hacking apart Food Stamps that it couldn’t even figure out how to pass a farm bill.  (And the House Ag Committee version, it should be mentioned, was an abomination, maintaining egregious farm subsidies and …

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We Interrupt This Blog…

…and outsource it (or offshore it or whatever) to Roy Edroso of Alicublog (h/t Dr. Black): HOW TO BECOME AN UNPERSON. Steven Hayward at Power Line, March 2011: Embedded below, if I have mastered the custom Power Line formatting, is a stunning five-minute video of Berkeley physicist Richard Muller shredding the infamous climate “hockey stick” that …

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Romney’s Views About Climate Policy: A Detailed Timeline

Updated Sept. 4, 2012. There has been considerable discussion of Governor Romney’s views about the causes of climate change and about policies such as cap and trade.  It’s not easy, however, to find detailed documentation.  For that reason, I’ve assembled as much information as I could find about what Romney has said and done over …

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Christie and Climate Change

I posted last week about Governor Christie’s support for solar power.  He immediately followed that action by vetoing a bill to bring New Jersey back into RGGI, the greenhouse gas trading system of the Northeast states. (RGGI stands for Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative.) The veto message points out that he had already vetoed a similar …

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The Politics of State Energy Deregulation: A Hypothesis

If you are interested in environmental policy, state public utility commissions might be the important agencies you’ve never heard of.  PUCs determine how much power capacity there will be and even more importantly, what the mix of energy sources will generate it.  Sometimes pundits will speak of “national energy policy”, but that is essentially a null set: …

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Christie Goes Solar

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie signed legislation a few days ago to strengthen the state’s solar industry. Utilities will be required to 2.05% of their power from solar in 2014, rising to 4.1% in 2028. The law also sets a price cap of $339 for each megawatt-hour short of the goal in 2014. According to …

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