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Snippets from the news

• Wal-Mart lobbies against carbon-offset guidelines. • What’s the climate impact of junk mail? • Household PCs go on an energy diet. • California school buses will get cleaner. • Map shows how climate change affects biodiversity. • Cuba scales back ethanol plans.

California’s innovative energy efficiency loan program is a model worth copying

A request: If you a) have anything to do with city or county government, and b) have any interest in, or authority over, property taxes, finance, or energy efficiency, please drop whatever you're doing for two minutes, and skim this article.

Oh, all right, I bet you didn't actually hit the link. So to make your job easier, I'll pull a quote or two.

California [just] enacted a law that allows cities and counties to make low-interest loans to homeowners and businesses to install solar panels, high-efficiency air conditioners and other energy-saving improvements.

Participants can pay back the loans over decades through property taxes. And if a property owner sells his home or business, the loan balance is transferred to the next owner, along with the improvements. [Emphasis added.]

I don't think that I emphasize this enough: This is truly groundbreaking. In fact, it may well be among the top three climate policies ever adopted by the state. I hope that other states follow suit soon -- even if it means fixing the state constitution (Cough*Washington*cough).

Uncertainty, the precautionary principle, and GMOs

Even if we had perfect information on the environmental impacts of industrial chemicals and processes, determining the appropriate levels of regulation would be extremely difficult. In our modern economy, all of us are willing to accept some level of risk, some health and environmental impacts, in order to elevate our material standard of living. In essence, there is no "zero impact" equilibrium, unless we envisage some type of pre-industrial age (and even then it is debatable).

Determining the appropriate level of regulation is made exponentially more difficult in a world of tremendous uncertainty about the impacts of even the most ubiquitous industrial chemicals. Our current state of knowledge with respect to most chemicals is extremely low; even what we do know is taken mainly from questionable animal research and we know virtually nothing about the synergistic effects of hundreds of chemicals swimming around our bloodstreams and our ecosystems over decades.

Faced with this great uncertainty, different types of regulatory schemes have developed. The U.S. model puts more of the onus on those who think a chemical or process poses a risk to prove that it does, while in the E.U. the onus is more on the producers to prove that compounds of processes are safe; the E.U. model is based more on the "precautionary principle."

As Mark Schapiro's excellent work has demonstrated, the E.U. model seems to be paying dividends not only with respect to health and environmental safety, but also economically; as the E.U.'s market share grows, companies around the world are ratcheting up their environmental standards in order to meet stricter E.U. guidelines. In turn, the E.U. now is much more influential in setting world standards than the U.S., which used to be the leader. This is a great development that environmentalists and economists should take not of: high environmental standards can be compatible with increased trade, productivity, and market share.

Keith Olbermann on McCain’s campaign

Brutal: [vodpod id=ExternalVideo.1011969&w=425&h=350&fv=launch%3D26045608%26amp%3Bwidth%3D400%26amp%3Bheight%3D320] See also Rachel Maddow’s comments at about 3:25 in here: [vodpod id=ExternalVideo.1011970&w=425&h=350&fv=launch%3D26045709%26amp%3Bwidth%3D400%26amp%3Bheight%3D320]

Presidential candidates keep the energy ads a-comin’

John McCain put out this new ad yesterday, “Broken,” in which he’s portrayed as the “original maverick” and pledges to “battle Big Oil.” (Someone might want to pass the message along to his donors.) Barack Obama responded with this new ad yesterday, challenging the premise that McCain has been a “maverick” on energy and other […]

Umbra on calculating CO2 weight

Dear Umbra, I know CO2 is a gas as other greenhouse gases are, and gases are sometimes lighter than air. So I’m wondering: how can gases be weighed in tons? That’s a hell of a lot of gas to weigh even one ton, let alone the millions of tons that are reported to be causing […]

Kaine vs. Sebelius

What Eve said — and also the coal thing.

Dell Inc. claims carbon neutrality

Dell Computer’s worldwide business operations are now carbon neutral, the company announced Wednesday. True carbon neutrality is, of course, a chimera for a giant IT company; notes business analyst Clive Longbottom, “You have to question whether they have taken all their workers’ commuting into consideration and the materials in making a computer, going all the […]

Fact-checking the McCain campaign’s press call on energy policy

The McCain campaign held a press call yesterday on Barack Obama’s energy policy, in which their spokesfolks let fly a few statements that should be categorized as something other than truthful. Senior adviser Douglas Holtz-Eakin: “Barack Obama has said no to more domestic exploration of oil and natural gas … He has said no to […]

Gore and Edwards, not sitting in a tree

Joel Makower makes a fantastic point here: Why aren’t Gore and Edwards working together? Or rather, why aren’t those fighting climate change working with those fighting poverty? I know Van Jones et al have done great work on this, but it obviously hasn’t reached the upper echelons of the left. These are not silos, not […]