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California stats say state emissions-reduction plan far more effective than federal law

When the U.S. EPA denied California the right to regulate greenhouse-gas emissions from vehicles, the agency reasoned that the just-passed energy bill’s boost to national fuel-economy standards would be stronger emissions-reduction policy than the state’s plan. California, which has sued, would beg to differ, and has released statistics refuting the EPA’s claim. For example: The […]

More on cap-and-trade systems

Here's a clear demonstration of why, in a cap-and-trade system, grandfathering emissions rights to historic polluters is a terrible idea:

The UK's biggest polluters will reap a windfall of at least £6bn from rising power prices and the soaring value of carbon under the new European carbon trading scheme ...

Critics argue ... that the scheme, under which nearly all allowances are granted free of charge rather than having to be bought by big polluters, has created a distorted market in which the worst offenders will enjoy bumper profits while incurring no extra underlying cost for producing greenhouse gases.

That's just about right: handing out pollution rights for free, as the European emissions trading system did, creates the potential for massive, unearned windfall profits.

Permits will have a market value -- someone will want to buy them. So when we hand out emissions permits at no cost, we're essentially handing out free money.

There may be a few exceptions to this rule: a few economic sectors where free allocation won't lead to windfall profits. But they're the exceptions. The rule (as demonstrated in Europe) is that grandfathering is great for polluters, and bad for consumers.

So maybe that's why lots of big oil and coal companies are so supportive of grandfathering ...

Climate refugees and Wi-Fi pollution

The Ecologist is such a great magazine. But I'm sorry that they don't make any of their content freely available online for me to link to here, because the Dec/Jan issue has some really important reading. For one, the world's first (human) climate refugees are about to lose their islands (in the Sunderbans Delta, which straddles the border of India and Bangladesh and is the world's largest mangrove forest, due to increased flows of water from melting glaciers in the Ganges headwaters).

There's also a meaty discussion about the possible negative health effects of Wi-Fi. Whether or not Wi-Fi microwaves actually cause headaches, sleep disturbance, depression, memory loss, and worse, as some studies claim, it is pretty remarkable -- according to a physicist interviewed for the piece -- that this technology could come to market and become ubiquitous without having to undergo safety trials or scrutiny.

With oil prices rising, Asia turns to coal

You may have heard that oil prices are flirting with $100 a barrel; what’s an oil-dependent, energy-hungry globe to do? In Asia, home to a third of the world’s proven coal reserves, the answer seems obvious. Across the continent, billions of dollars are being poured into R&D of coal-to-liquid fuel and coal-bed methane extraction. Some […]

What will it take to make 2008 great?

The following guest post is by Rep. Jay Inslee (D-Wash.), originally published on Climate Progress. He is the co-author of Apollo's Fire: Igniting America's Clean Energy Economy.

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Now that our New Year's Eve party hats are put away, it's time to look to the next year in the battle against global warming. In the year 2007, some good things did indeed happen on this front. Measures significantly improving car mileage standards and promoting the growth of renewable fuels were signed into law. But if 2007 was a year that could be considered in some ways good, then 2008 needs to be a year that will be great.

Nothing else will do. The cataclysms of one million square miles of ice melting in the Arctic, a several-fold increase in the rate of melting tundra, and the acceleration of melting in Greenland, foretell possible feedback mechanisms that demand a faster and more aggressive clean energy revolution than we even envisioned a year ago. Whatever we thought necessary on New Year's Day 2007 needs to be doubled in 2008.

So what will it take to make '08 great? Three things will do the trick.

Why not Eilperin?

After four separate posts bashing Peter Baker’s craptastic WaPo piece, I come to a simple question: Why did they have Baker write this piece instead of their environmental reporter Juliet Eilperin? She’s incredibly sharp, one of the best green reporters working today. I doubt she would have gone along with the spin as easily as […]

Compact fluorescents can cause health problems, say groups

As Australia, Britain, and the good ol’ U.S. of A make plans to phase out traditional energy-sucking light bulbs, health concerns are being raised about compact fluorescents, the most popular alternative. The British Association of Dermatologists says CFLs can cause rashes on folks with photosensitive skin, the U.K. Migraine Action Association suggests that the bulbs […]

Dodd and Biden drop out of race for Democratic presidential nomination

After getting trounced in the Iowa caucuses yesterday, Democratic Sens. Chris Dodd (Conn.) and Joe Biden (Del.) dropped out of the presidential race. Dodd was the only candidate who supported a corporate carbon tax as a means to fight climate change; both Dodd and Biden supported a cap-and-trade system to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions 80 percent […]

Seed-and-chemical giant sees its profit triple

In a gold rush, the firms that supply the gold diggers with tools — not the gold diggers themselves — make the highest and steadiest profits. That’s a platitude, but it’s also usually true. And it’s now playing out in the boom in corn-based ethanol. Don’t waste much time envying corn farmers. Sure, they’ve seen […]

Tom Carper totally knows the president

(An on we go, in a series on the WaPo piece so bad it required numerous separate gripes.) Tom Carper would like you to know that he’s a) committed on global warming, and b) tight with the president: People find all sorts of ways to lobby President Bush. Sometimes it comes in the form of […]