Water
Is Rain a Miracle?
Starting this Sunday evening, with the festival of Shemini Atzeret, observant Jews add a brief passage in the middle of the Amidah, the central prayer of the Jewish liturgy. Addressing God, the line reads: You cause the winds to blow and the rain to fall. It’s hardly surprising in one sense: with the beginning of …
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CONTINUE READINGAdapting to Drought Through International Free Trade
In a world where people and nations do not trade, you can only consume what you produce. If you want a cup of coffee and can’t trade with anyone then you better know how to make one. International trade breaks the link between consumption and production. When nasty drought occurs in one nations, but …
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CONTINUE READINGClimate Change and National Security
The two parties disagree sharply about whether climate change can be considered a threat to our national security. A recent paper by Andrew Guzman (Berkeley) and Jody Freeman (Harvard) summarizes the support for this idea among serious students of national security: In 2008, the National Intelligence Council produced the most comprehensive analysis to date of …
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CONTINUE READINGWhat Does Climate Change Mean for Water Rights?
Dan Farber and I, along with Berkeley economist Michael Hanemann, have a new report out on climate change and water rights in California. The report—Legal Analysis of Barriers to Adaptation by California’s Water Sector—was prepared by Berkeley Law’s Center for Law, Energy & the Environment, and it can be downloaded here. The report was released …
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CONTINUE READINGCalifornia’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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CONTINUE READINGDestroying 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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CONTINUE READINGOverdrafting California’s Groundwater Resources–A Chronic Condition
A recently issued study by a University of Texas-led group of research scientists confirm a discomforting fact: groundwater resources in California’s Central Valley are being depleted at an alarming rate. As reported in the Sacramento Bee, the study warns that current groundwater extraction rates from the Central Valley aquifer–which is primarily mined to serve agricultural …
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CONTINUE READINGSupreme Court Grants Review in Two Clean Water Act Cases From Ninth Circuit
This morning the U.S. Supreme Court granted certiorari in two high-profile Clean Water Act cases from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. The justices simultaneously denied review in a major federalism decision, also from the Ninth Circuit, involving an industry challenge to a California Air Resources Board’s regulation requiring ships to use low-polluting fuels near …
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CONTINUE READINGIn the Supreme Court’s Crosshairs: the Ninth Circuit’s Environmental Jurisprudence
All eyes will be on the U.S. Supreme Court this week, as the justices conclude their current Term and, among other things, issue their long-awaited decision(s) on the constitutionality of the newly-enacted federal healthcare law. But the Supreme Court also has some other, key decisions to make as to whether to take up four controversial environmental cases from …
CONTINUE READINGMourning An Uncommon Student of the Commons
Elinor Ostrom, winner 0f the Nobel economics prize, died earlier today. She is best known for her work on how groups manage common resources such as fisheries. The “tragedy of the commons” is a theory that these common resources will inevitably be destroyed unless they are privatized or regulated by governments. Professor Ostrom showed that …
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