Politics
A Legislative Response to California’s Housing Emergency: Senator Skinner’s SB 330
How to Make a Good Bill Even Better
(This post is co-authored by U.C. Davis Law School Professor Chris Elmendorf) Last week, as President Trump harrumphed about the faux emergency on our nation’s Southern border, California State Senator Nancy Skinner introduced a potentially transformative bill that addresses California’s real emergency: the ever-escalating cost of housing in the state’s economically productive metropolitan regions. As …
CONTINUE READINGThe GOP’s Climate Views Are Thawing
Significant parts of the GOP seem to be leaving Trump behind on the climate issue.
There were three interesting stories about climate politics in the papers today: one about Trump, one about other Republicans, and one about both. What these stories tell us is that part of the GOP is coming to terms with reality; Trump not surprisingly is not. First, as to Trump. As you may have noticed, Trump …
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CONTINUE READINGScoping Out the Green New Deal
How would we go about decarbonizing the most needy U.S. states?
Progressives are calling for a Green New Deal. The details are still very fuzzy, despite the House resolution introduced by Markey and Ocasio-Cortez. That proposal as a ten-year timetable to eliminate carbon, which is highly unrealistic. Nevertheless, it’s worth thinking about what an all-out effort to decarbonizing the economy would look like. The Green New …
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CONTINUE READINGA Time For Privacy: California Legislature Moves to Protect Academic Research
In an era defined in Washington by lies and the suppression of scientific research, California is positioning itself as a defender of facts and free inquiry. Assemblymember Laura Friedman (D, Los Angeles) this week introduced Assembly Bill 700, a bill sponsored by the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) to address the harm inflicted on public …
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CONTINUE READING…For Fighting Over
Nuclear-Armed India Announces Water Cut-Off To Nuclear-Armed Pakistan
Uh-Oh: Union minister Nitin Gadkari in a tweet has confirmed that India would ‘choke’ the water supply to Pakistan in light of the Pulwama attack. The move comes in the backdrop of the February 14 attack on CRPF convoy in Pulwama in Jammu and Kashmir, which resulted in the death of 40 CRPF personnel. India …
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CONTINUE READINGBottoms-Up! An Emerging New Governance System (3)
Bottom-up strategies can ultimately pave the road for stronger international agreement.
It is difficult to measure the extent of positive feedback between climate initiatives. But it seems evident that such feedback does exist. A major climate initiative in one jurisdiction seems to encourage climate action elsewhere. This makes climate action a more appealing prospect for any individual jurisdiction, because by acting it can increase climate actions …
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CONTINUE READINGDoes the Fossil Fuel Industry Support Geoengineering?
A misleading new report from Center for International Environmental Law and the Heinrich Boell Foundation demeans the discourse
Geoengineering is controversial in the climate change community, and understandably so. Proposed interventions like negative emissions technologies (a.k.a. carbon dioxide removal) and solar geoengineering (a.k.a. solar radiation management or SRM) — which some writers group together as “geoengineering” — involve large-scale intervention in the climate system that could have adverse physical or social impacts. At …
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CONTINUE READINGI’ll Just Be Over Here In My Fallout Shelter
The Green New Deal may be ambitious, but it’s not alarmist.
It would be impossible to react to every piece of misinformation or poor reporting about climate change—let alone every misguided opinion editorial—that lives online today, but Bret Stephens’ February 15 piece in the New York Times strikes me as warranting a response. That’s not because of the clickbait title (“Is Nancy Pelosi A Climate Skeptic?” …
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CONTINUE READINGWhat I Wish The Green New Deal Hadn’t Left Out
Greening our infrastructure is part of the solution, but so’s city planning.
While there’s certainly been no shortage of criticism of last week’s Green New Deal resolution, the common line hasn’t been that the resolution doesn’t try to cover enough ground. On the contrary, it’s been called an everything-but-the-carbon-sink approach; even Trevor Noah devoted a few minutes of the Daily Show to gaping at the proposal’s efforts …
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CONTINUE READINGDonald Trump Creates the Green New Deal
Emergency Powers Can Be Very….Flexible
Mitch McConnell announced on the Senate floor today that Donald Trump will sign the new border compromise, then declare a National Emergency at the border, and use Presidential powers under the Emergency declaration to fund at least part of his border wall. Demonstrating his central philosophical principle — party over country — McConnell announced his …
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