policy
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Before the Massey mine disaster, there was Crandall Canyon
I’m reposting an essay I wrote in 2007 about another mine disaster. It’s relevant to what’s happening now in West Virginia. In March 2007, I testified before a House subcommittee on energy and mineral resources about the impact of climate change on public lands. There were seven witnesses, and one was Robert Murray, founder of […]
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The problem with a green economy: economics hates the environment
Cross-posted from the Wonk Room. Economics is critical to getting decent climate legislation passed, as Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman discusses in a extended piece for the New York Times. Economists like me have always suspected that this was true, but then we also suspect that economics is critical to pretty much everything. The problem […]
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What can the health-care act teach the food movement?
President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton celebrate healthcare reform. Will food reformers ever get to celebrate a wide-ranging policy victory? Photo: White HouseWhat follows is the first of a two-post series. “This is what change looks like,” declared a triumphant President Obama after the House had narrowly passed an historic healthcare-reform bill. What would […]
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Blowin’ in the wind: The true meaning of ‘ag unity’
Of the 50 or so food and farm conferences I’ve attended in the last several years, the Drake Forum for America’s New Farmers: Policy Innovations & Opportunities held March 4-5 in Washington, D.C., rises to the top. Actual farmers — not just commodity crop growers but innovative “agripreneurs” like Xe Susane Moua from Minnesota and […]
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Policy fixes to unleash clean energy, part 7
Having noted in part 2 that all barriers to clean energy deployment can be lumped into utility policy, environmental policy, and out-of-date policy — and having outlined the necessary fixes for the first two in parts 5 and 6 — we now address out-of-date policies. This is perhaps the hardest to address, because it is […]
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Policy fixes to unleash clean energy, part 6
Having outlined ideal utility policy in part 5, we move now to ideal environmental policy. As a reminder, this is not the policy that could be accomplished tomorrow given political realities, but rather the long-term goal we ought to shoot for. If the only thing that mattered was good environmental policy guided by responsible principles, […]
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Policy fixes to unleash clean energy, part 2
In part 1, I outlined five questions that ought to be answered before we have any conversation about energy policy reform. Here is my answer to the first question: What are the primary existing regulatory barriers to the deployment of cleaner energy? They are legion. But they can be lumped into three broad categories: utility […]
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Policy fixes to unleash clean energy
Suppose you became King tomorrow and your first order of business was to modernize the U.S. energy system — make it cleaner, cheaper, more reliable and more sustainable. What would you do? Now suppose you’re the King’s subjects, and he has just announced his plan per the above. What will you learn? Clearly, you’ll learn […]
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Salvadoran mudslides: A plea for climate change solutions and holistic water policy
Torrents of mud and boulders flattened villages in El Salvador recently, leaving over 100 people dead and thousands homeless. From all indications, climate change will be most acutely felt in an escalating frequency and ferocity of floods and droughts. It’s chilling to think that we ought to expect much more of this kind of devastation […]
