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Court rules that EPA is not obligated to regulate CO2 as air pollutant.
As many of you probably know, today a three-judge panel of the D.C. Court of Appeals ruled that the U.S. EPA is not obligated to regulate CO2 as an air pollutant. In doing so it ruled against a coalition of states and cities that had filed a petition trying to force the EPA to mandate reductions.
This is bad, if not entirely unexpected, news. I suspect we'll publish something more about it on Monday.
For now, Chris Mooney has read the majority opinion by Judge A. Raymond Randolph, the concurrence by Judge David Sentelle, and the dissent by Judge David Tatel. In Mooney's judgment, on both scientific and legal grounds, "Tatel rocks."
Update [2005-7-15 16:0:55 by Dave Roberts]: Not surprisingly, over at NRO Jonathan Adler has a different take on the case:
A decision to regulate greenhouse gases as air pollutants would vastly increase the EPA's regulatory authority over private economic activity. Carbon dioxide is a ubiquitous byproduct of fossil-fuel energy combustion. Controlling carbon dioxide emissions would require regulating every industrial facility that burns oil, coal, or natural gas, along with all manner of agricultural practices and land-use decisions. It would further require yet another round of federal controls on automobile tailpipe emissions. If the federal government is to assume such awesome regulatory authority, the decision should be made in the halls of Congress, not a federal courthouse.
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The Canadian press
Carl Pope sends some interesting ruminations from Canada:
It's not that Canada (or Europe) necessarily does a better job of environmental stewardship. Canada's greenhouse emissions -- driven by production of oil for the U.S. market -- have actually increased faster than those in the United States.
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What's different here is that the dialogue feels more honest. The media actually try to describe reality rather than falling back on critiquing spin. Although the reporting may be opinionated, biased, or even wrong, it remains (at least modestly) connected to the real world. Consider global warming. Canada is a country that cynics in the U.S. like to offer as a proof that "a little warming wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing." Canadians suffer no such illusions. ... Little wonder that eighty percent of Canadians are proud that their nation has ratified Kyoto.
Canadians are desperate to find a way to get the U.S. back in the game. They struggled to get their government to agree to host the United Nations global warming conference in Montreal this fall. Their leaders were told that this was a foolish idea -- that the Bush administration would make them regret it -- but the public insisted, and its voice was heeded. The signers of the Kyoto agreement will meet in Montreal in November. Canada wants to use that meeting to enlist Americans -- on both side of the U.S./Canada border -- to join the struggle for a viable climactic future. The passion, the fury, the fear, and the hope are tangible and exciting. -
Toxic babies
You know, nothing warms the cockles of a father-to-be's heart like a study showing that babies in the womb are awash in toxic chemicals.
We are abusing our children, all of us, before they are even born. Lovely.
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SCOTUS update
Looks like, Beltway scuttlebutt notwithstanding, Rehnquist isn't retiring.
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A Dung Deal
Toxic pollution in Arctic likely caused by contaminated bird poop Native residents of northern Arctic regions are ridden with toxic chemicals — some of the highest body concentrations in the world — and new research has uncovered an unlikely culprit: guano, or as we prefer to call it, bird dookie. Scientists have long assumed that […]
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Macroeconomy as microecosystem
To follow up on this post, it's great when ecologists and economists start speaking the same language. Even better is when they form the US Society for Ecological Economics. If you're the conference type they are having their third biennial conference next week.
Even if you won't be in the Tacoma area, though, one of their policy briefs is of particular note. Written by Herman E. Daly of the University of Maryland, it covers "Economic Growth and Development." But it has a very environmental twist.
It's a Word document and it's only 1.5 pages. Go read it. To further entice those terrified of commitment, two particularly poignant excerpts are below.
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Dams
I missed this TIME story on the growing dam-removal movement a few days ago -- it's worth a read.
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Famed progressive blog raises money to buy turbines.
Dang, I don't know how I missed this:
The Kossacks over at famed progressive weblog DailyKos are trying to raise money to build a wind farm. A dKos-branded wind farm, no less!
Another Kossack suggests that the money would be better spent establishing "a foundation dedicated to funding independent and innovative energy technologies that help people, not corporations."
The comment threads on both posts are well worth reading.
So what do you think? If you had a huge group of investors, where would you put the money?
(Via Mobjectivist)
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Car-sharing starts to take off.
Here's a bit of interesting news on car sharing companies, which, according to The New York Times, are catching on a bit in Europe. The most salient bit:
Studies suggest that one shared car replaces 4 to 10 private cars, as people sell their old vehicles...The result is a 30 to 45 percent reduction in vehicle miles traveled for each new customer.
Now, 30 to 45 percent is a pretty sizeable decline in driving. But this shouldn't come as too much of a surprise; as any economist would predict, converting a fixed cost (e.g., the cost of buying the car) to a variable cost (e.g., the cost of renting a shared car, which for Seattle Flexcars costs up to $9 per hour) makes people far more selective about how much they drive. And that probably saves car-sharers money overall: Yes, they pay more for each trip, but they make fewer trips, and also avoid much of the expense of purchasing and maintaining a car for personal use.
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