Politics
An Environmental Hero Rides Into the Sunset
The Sacramento Bee reports today that Peter Douglas, the long-time executive director of the California Coastal Commission, has taken a medical leave of absence and will retire in November. Douglas definitely deserves his retirement, but it’s a real loss for the environmental community. Douglas helped draft the original Coastal Act as legislative director for former …
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CONTINUE READINGThe Tea Party Embraces Local Energy Efficiency Financing?
It looks like we’ve finally found an environmental issue that can attract strong bipartisan support. The PACE program allows municipal bond financing to pay for energy efficiency retrofits and solar panels, among other environmentally benign building improvements, to be repaid through property tax assessments. But the Federal Housing Finance Administration (FHFA) essentially squashed the residential …
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CONTINUE READINGClimate Deniers: Stupid or Evil?
It’s an interesting psychological question, actually. Fox News’ climate change “expert,” the appropriately-named Joe Bastardi, claims that the theory of anthropogenic climate change cannot be true because it contradicts what we call the 1st law of thermodynamics. Energy can be neither created nor destroyed. So to look for input of energy into the atmosphere, you have …
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CONTINUE READINGThe War Against the Environment
Using the pretext of saving jobs, the GOP has embarked on the biggest campaign against the environment in modern history.
CONTINUE READINGHow Do You Solve a Problem Like Conservative White Men? Ask the Ol’ Perfesser
Dave Roberts wants to know. Roberts alludes to a recent survey showing that conservative white men are the most likely group to be climate deniers. (We can put this in the “knock-me-over-with-a-feather” department, although it would be interesting to see how this works with conservative white women). More interestingly, the study (with assistance from Roberts) …
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CONTINUE READINGComparing the future of marriage equality and climate change policy
A little under 15 years ago (Sept. 21, 1996) President Clinton signed the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which prohibited same-sex marriage for federal purposes. Just over a year later, global negotiators agreed to the Kyoto Protocol to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, which was intended to create an international framework to control …
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CONTINUE READINGNevada Re-Discovers the Public Trust Doctrine
The Nevada Supreme Court was the source of a pleasant surprise earlier this month, when it issued a decision formally “adopting” the public trust doctrine as Nevada law. The opinion, Lawrence v. Clark County, involved a proposed transfer of land in and adjacent to the Colorado River near Laughlin, Nevada to Clark County officials. Nevada …
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CONTINUE READINGSome Good News, For a Change
The NY Times reports: On Friday, when President Obama is scheduled to announce even stricter standards — in fact, the largest increase in mileage requirements since the government began regulating consumption of gasoline by cars in the 1970s — the chief executives of Detroit’s Big Three are expected to be in Washington again. But this …
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CONTINUE READINGIs Climate Denial Like Appeasing Hitler?
Britain’s Energy Secretary thinks so: World leaders who oppose a global agreement to tackle climate change are making a similar mistake to the one made by politicians who tried to appease Adolf Hitler before World War Two, British Energy and Climate Change Minister Chris Huhne said on Thursday…. “This is our Munich moment,” he added, referring to …
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CONTINUE READINGOn light bulbs, politics, and psychology
Dan has (understandably) been quite outraged at efforts in the Republican-controlled House to eliminate energy efficiency standards for light bulbs (which have been inaccurately portrayed as a flat ban on incandescent bulbs, even though new substitutes are being developed). While these efforts might be seen as purely ignorant orjust politically-opportunistic showboating, I think they in …
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