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Seven green leaders reveal their favorite reads

Good night, sleep tight, don’t let the bad books bite. Photo: margolove Which books and magazines are tempting today’s environmental movers and shakers to keep the CFLs burning late into the night? Grist asked seven movement leaders for their recommended reads. (Been burning the night oil yourself? Add your own favorite reads in the comments […]

30,000 farmed salmon escape off B.C. coast, endangering wild stocks

Some 30,000 farmed Atlantic salmon have escaped from their pen off the coast of British Columbia into the Pacific Ocean. Farmed salmon can harm wild salmon stocks — which are already declining on the west coast — by competing with them for food as well as spreading disease. In this case, the escaped salmon are […]

Drilling offshore vs. fuel efficiency

Over at CEPR, Dean Baker makes a somewhat cutesy but still quite illustrative comparison: the barrels of oil per day we could get by 2027 through offshore drilling (when production rate will max out) vs. the oil savings we would have gotten per day if we’d continued ramping up the CAFE standard at roughly the […]

Obama, transportation policy, and the highway bill

Great story in CQ this week on bike politics. Did you know that Obama met a few weeks ago with 160 cycling advocates and promised them his support? I didn’t. The 600-pound gorilla in transportation politics is the 2009 negotiation of a new highway bill, which according to CQ “is already being touted as embodying […]

How to reduce California auto emissions faster than Pavley

Last update: 7/22/2008

In my last post I touted the benefits of a fully refunded emissions tax. Let's take a look at how it could work in California.

When it comes to a refunded tax, more money for industry doesn't mean less money for consumers. Case in point: Today's gasoline prices in California are averaging $4.58/gal, which equates¹ to $536/MT-CO2e. That's how much California drivers are currently paying to emit CO2 -- and how much they could save from fuel economy improvements.

The same approach used by the Swedish program could be applied to motivate efficiency improvements in vehicles, consumer appliances, etc., by employing feebates, which can be implemented as a kind of refunded emission tax. The tax would be applied to projected lifecycle emissions (direct or upstream) and would be refunded in proportion to some measure of economic utility (e.g. refrigeration capacity, illumination output, etc.). The tax and refund together would incentivize lower emissions per unit of economic utility. Feebates could be used as an alternative to traditional performance standards, or could be used to effectively impose a price floor on a tradable standard.

BLM reverses stance on solar-project moratorium

The U.S. Bureau of Land Management has reversed its recent moratorium on new applications for solar-energy projects on public land, allowing companies to keep submitting proposals for new solar projects. The solar-project freeze had been instituted in late May while the BLM began conducting a two-year study on the potential environmental impacts of solar projects […]

‘Purpose,’ McCain’s new energy ad, features wind turbines he voted against

McCain has a new ad titled "Purpose":

The AP critiqued it with a piece titled, "McCain energy ad short on specifics." Okay, mainstream media, half credit.

The ad has a much bigger problem than lack of specifics -- McCain is trying to get a political boost by claiming he will champion popular clean energy technologies that he, like President Bush and most conservatives, has consistently opposed:

G8 leaders head to Hokkaido where Bush and his sherpa will provide climate guidance

On Monday, George W. Bush will travel to Hokkaido, Japan, for his eighth and final G8 summit, where climate change is likely to be the subject of heated (ahem) talks. At last year’s meeting, leaders agreed to seriously consider a goal of cutting global greenhouse-gas emissions 50 percent by 2050. But the Bush administration continues […]

Olympic sailing venue battles with massive algae bloom

With a mere 37 days until the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games, Qingdao, the port city where Olympic sailing events will be held, has sailed into troubled waters. Since June 12, municipal and Olympic officials have been wrestling with an algae bloom in Fushan Bay that has produced over 20,000 metric tons of weeds and green muck. Approximately 10,000 troops and Qingdao residents and 1,000 boats have been dispatched to dredge the bay.

According to a Reuters report, algae blooms are regular occurrences in Qingdao, but this one stands out:

Republican House members ask EPA to scale back ethanol mandate

More than 50 Republican representatives sent a letter [PDF] to the Environmental Protection Agency last week urging the agency to lower the mandate for ethanol production in response to both the recent flooding in the Midwest and drought in the South. They argue that one-third of the country’s corn crop will be used for ethanol […]