One-Stop Shopping for Climate Information

CITRIS, which is  a University of California engineering consortium, has a really useful site called Climate Navigator.  The site is a great source of information about the many dimensions of climate change, from policy to energy technology.  One neat feature is an interactive model that allows you to design your own global climate policy, setting  limits on individual countries and seeing the effect on the global picture.  Give it a try!

This Week on Legal Planet

Nov 06 A New Beginning for the California Delta?
Early this past Wednesday morning, following an all-night session that would have made any college freshman proud, the California Legislature enacted… [read more]

Nov 05 California water deal struck (just in time for UCLA event)
After months (years) of negotations, the California legislature has passed what many are calling the most comprehensive California water legislation in… [read more]

Nov 04 The Cost of Climate Change
According to Climate Wire, the Obama Administration is trying to come up with a reliable economic estimate of the cost of unchecked climate change.  … [read more]

A New Beginning for the California Delta?

The Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. (Photo: brothergrimm / flickr)

Early this past Wednesday morning, following an all-night session that would have made any college freshman proud, the California Legislature enacted major legislation designed to address the myriad problems affecting California’s Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. The package of five bills,  SB 7X 1, SB 7X 2, SB 7X 6, SB 7X 7, and SB 7X 8, which now go to Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger for his expected signature, also addresses broader issues of California water supply and water rights.

My colleague Cara Horowitz has recently posted on this development, but let me offer my own perspective: This legislative package follows years of political debate and a two-year review process by the Delta Vision Task Force, an advisory body appointed by Governor Schwarzenegger to provide its policy recommendations to the Governor and Legislature. (Full disclosure statement: this author served as a member of that seven-member Task Force.)

California water deal struck (just in time for UCLA event)

After months (years) of negotations, the California legislature has passed what many are calling the most comprehensive California water legislation in half a century.  The task was difficult: Figure out a way to fix our ailing Sacramento-San Joaquin delta; address shortfalls in water supply affecting urban, agricultural, and environmental interests; anticipate additional shortfalls and water supply difficulties related to climate change; and do all this in the midst of the state’s historic budget crisis, with little or no money readily available. 

The SacBee and the LA Times both have overviews of what made it into the final deal and what didn’t.  Apparently the long-controversial “peripheral canal” is made much more likely, but with constraints, and is not mandated.  Legislators delegated many difficult tasks to a new state body asked to devise solutions for the Delta.   And whether the bill is actually funded and implemented will depend on whether state voters approve a new $11 billion water bond, to be placed on the Nov. 2010 ballot, to fund dams, underground water banking, water recycling, Delta restoration and regional projects.    

I can’t help noting the great timing of the deal from UCLA law school’s parochial perspective.  Tomorrow (Friday Nov. 6, at 10am), we are hosting a discussion of California’s uncertain future water supply, focusing especially on impacts to southern California land development and water management.   Here are details.  Come and join us if you’re in town and want to know more about this week’s water deal.  Panelists will include Dr. Ellen Hanak of the Public Policy Institute of California; Jeff Kightlinger, General Manager of the Metropolitan Water District; Peter Hsiao, head of Morrison & Foerster’s Land Use and Environmental Law Group in LA; and Mark Gold, President of Heal the Bay.

The Cost of Climate Change

According to Climate Wire, the Obama Administration is trying to come up with a reliable economic estimate of the cost of unchecked climate change.   This sounds like a great idea but is actually full of pitfalls.

Many of the individual elements of the economic impact analysis are the subjects of serious debate.  For instance, economists hotly dispute the net effect of climate change on agriculture, with some finding an overall positive effect on U.S. agriculture (but with very large regional variations),while others find substantial negative effects. Now multiply that uncertainty by every sector of the economy.

And then there’s the question of how we should treat harm to future generations in the analysis — do those injuries get counted at full value, or do they get “discounted” and if so at what rate?  Economists tend to agree in principle on discounting but there’s no consensus about the rate — and the rate is hugely important.

Economists also increasingly believe that the risk of catastrophic outcomes is a key part of the analysis.  But we don’t know how to quantify that risk, so it’s hard to put a price on it.

There are a variety of reasons why pricing carbon is an important exercise, but it’s not going to be an easy one!

Don’t diss local climate action

I can’t let this one pass unremarked. Seth Jaffe, writing in the Boston law firm Foley Hoag’s “Law and the Environment” blog, uses Portland Oregon’s recent release of an updated draft Climate Action Plan as an occasion to criticize not only Portland (one of the few cities I actually like) but the whole concept of local climate planning and regulation. Jaffe sees local climate action as “a heavy thumb on the side of the scale arguing for comprehensive federal legislation.” Despite conceding that some local climate measures “may be beneficial,” Jaffe argues that “many . . . will be inefficient, contradictory, or both.” He recognizes that the bills passed by the House and under consideration in the Senate would not preempt local action. It appears that he would prefer preemption, but at a minimum he wants quick federal action so that this silly idea of local climate planning will stop spreading.

Jaffe is flat wrong. Of course we need national climate legislation, but federal law should support and encourage local climate action, not try to squelch it.

Journal watch

I’ve been catching up on some reading.  Here are links to a few interesting recent journal articles.

• Thomas Dietz, Gerald T. Gardner, Jonathan Gilligan, Paul C. Stern, and Michael P. Vandenbergh, Household Actions Can Provide a Behavioral Wedge to Rapidly Reduce U.S. Carbon Emissions, 106 PNAS 18452 (Nov. 3, 2009).   The authors, including Vanderbilt law professor Vandenbergh, who in earlier writings has emphasized the need for climate change policy to address individual behavior as well as industrial emissions, argue that a range of policy tools combined with “strong social marketing” could produce a 20% reduction in U.S. household greenhouse gas emissions, equivalent to a 7.4% reduction in total U.S. emissions, within ten years at relatively low cost and “with little or no reduction in household well-being.”  (abstract) (open-access pdf)
• Janet A. Nye, Jason S. Link, Jonathan A. Hare, William J. Overholtz, Changing Spatial Distribution of Fish Stocks in Relation to Climate and Population Size on the Northeast United States Continental Shelf, 393 Marine Ecology Progress Series 111 (Oct. 30, 2009).  They find that 24 of the 36 northeastern US (Georges Bank to the mid-Atlantic) stocks assessed showed statistically significant distributional shifts associated with large-scale warming from 1968 to 2007. Shifts included moves poleward and to increased depth. Total range expanded for some stocks, and contracted for others. They conclude, not surprisingly, that fisheries managers will need to factor climate change into their calculations. Studies like this can help make that consideration feasible. (abstract) (full text pdf (subscription required))
• Joseph E. Fargione, Thomas R. Cooper, David J. Flaspohler, Jason Hill, Clarence Lehman, Tim McCoy, Scott McLeod, Erik J. Nelson, Karen S. Oberhauser, and David Tilman, Bioenergy and Wildlife:  Threats and Opportunities for Grassland Conservation, 59 BioScience 767 (Oct. 2009).  This paper documents the growth of corn ethanol production in the U.S. and its potential impacts on wildlife. But the authors don’t stop there. They suggest that bioenergy production can be much more compatible with wildlife, through the use of biomass wastes and wildlife-friendly native grasses. The authors are not blind enthusiasts; they note the ways in which various energy crops may conflict with wildlife, and suggest a research program and general policy approaches to promoting wildlife-friendly bioenergy.  (abstract available here) (full text pdf (subscription required))

India’s Prime Minister Slaps Down Attempts at New Climate Negotiating Policy

Well, so much for that:

Faced with resistance from within and outside to his advocacy for a dramatic change of stand on climate change negotiations,environment minister Jairam Ramesh was in a damage control mode on Tuesday.

The minister retraced his steps against the backdrop of clear signs that the country’s climate negotiators, including Prime Minister’s special envoy Shyam Saran and C Dasgupta, were unhappy with his controversial proposition. Dasgupta, a veteran of many battles with the developed countries — the leading polluters — had considered quitting in protest against the attempt to shift gears. The senior negotiator was reassured only after the PMO clarified that Ramesh had, in his letter to the PM, merely reflected his personal views.

Some observers had leapt prematurely on the disclosure of a private note from Ramesh to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, which had argued for reorienting India’s climate policy closer to the G-20 and away from the G-77 — in other words, attempting to reach a compromise with developed nations. 

In his letter, Ramesh had suggested, rightfully in my view, that although India could not accept binding emissions caps, it could adopt a “schedules approach,” which would allow different countries to pledge a variety of actions for cutting emissions such as renewable electricity standards and provisions to avoid deforestation rather than relying on economy-wide caps on emissions as the indication of a country’s commitment.  i believe that this is the best way to approach New Delhi on the issue, as I wrote earlier this year.

Ramesh is an intelligent and sophisticated advocate, but it seems to me that he was clearly suckered here: he may have intended to start a new conversation within Indian government circles, but a well-placed leak destroyed it.  And really, he should have anticipated that.  The fact of the matter is that in India, the Environment Ministry is very weak, and attempts to interfere in these negotiations represented a challenge to Singh’s climate advisor Shyam Saran and Chandrashekhar Dasgupta, a key member of the Prime Minister’s climate team.

But after Copenhagen, the United States and India are going to have to pick up the pieces, and the schedules approach is a promising way to start.

Hot off the press at Ecology Law Quarterly

Ecology Law Quarterly has a new issue available online, featuring articles about global environmental law; standing; and NRDC v. Winter; as well as a review of Doremus and Tarlock on the Klamath Basin.  Browse the ELQ website to see this issue, a preview of the next one, the latest from Ecology Law Currents, and more.

Or go directly to the articles in this issue using the links below:

• The Emergence of Global Environmental Law, Tseming Yang and Robert V. Percival  Read Article (PDF)
• Standing and Statistical Persons: A Risk-Based Approach to Standing, Bradford Mank   Read Article (PDF)
• No Whale of a Tale: Legal Implications of Winter v. NRDC, Joel R. Reynolds, Taryn G. Kiekow, Stephen Zak Smith  Read Article (PDF)
• Salmon, Science, and Subsidies, Book Review of Water War in the Klamath Basin: Macho Law, Combat Biology, and Dirty Politics, Ian Fein  Read Article (PDF)

Bad News on the Climate Bill

According to the Post,

The climate-change bill that has been moving slowly through the Senate will face a stark political reality when it emerges for committee debate on Tuesday: With Democrats deeply divided on the issue, unless some Republican lawmakers risk the backlash for signing on to the legislation, there is almost no hope for passage.

Let’s hope that’s not true.  But if it is, we at least have state regulation and EPA regulation under the Clean Air Act to keep things moving forward.  Unfortunately, in modern America, Congress too often seems to be the last place to look for serious decisions about social policy.

UPDATE: By Monday morning, the headline on the story had been watered down to “Climate Bill Faces Hurdles in the Senate.”  In rereading the article, I was also struck by the ending:

State lawmakers who came to advise the White House last week on climate saw a different picture. “We looked for any Republican, in any state legislature in the country, who supported a bill,” recalled Minnesota state Rep. Jeremy Kalin. “We found not a one.”

If that’s right, it’s a sad commentary on the state of Amerian politics.

 

A red-letter day for washing machines

Under the Bush administration, which was implacably hostile to state environmental regulations exceeding federal minimum requirements, the Department of Energy refused to consider California’s request for permission to issue state rules setting water efficiency standards for washing machines. The Ninth Circuit has now set aside that action as arbitrary and capricious, and ruled that DOE must reconsider California’s request. That likely means that California’s rules will eventually take effect, but several years later than they should have.

Does it matter whether California can regulate the water efficiency of washing machines? More than you might think. California’s 2002 statute directing the California Energy Commission to set water efficiency standards was supported by a finding that washing machines account for a whopping 22% of average household water use. (If that seems too high, consider that the joint DOE/EPA Energy Star program assumes an average of 392 loads per per household per year.)

According to the Ninth Circuit, California asserted that its washing machine standards, when fully implemented, would produce annual water savings sufficient to supply a city the size of San Diego. That’s critically important in California, where water is chronically short and the water use cycle (transporting, supplying, treating, and disposing of water) is responsible for nearly 20% of electricity use.

Thoughts About the Future of Nuclear Power

Apparently, substantially safer designs for nuclear reactors are now available.  But the safe storage and disposal of nuclear waste is a significant challenge and a yet unresolved problem. Presently, waste is stored at over a hundred facilities across the country, within seventy-five miles of the homes of 161 million people.

The major problem is the longevity of the waste – plutonium will be dangerous for 250,000 years.  Although we may be able to  model the geologic and physical processes at some geographic sites over such time periods, no one seems to have a clue about how to model possible changes in human behavior and society.  Thus, by producing nuclear waste, we are leaving our descendants with a dangerous problem, while having no real idea how competent they will be to handle it.  Assuming we care about their welfare, we seem to be taking a serious gamble at their expense.

In the short run, it is not feasible to eliminate existing nuclear facilities. The tougher problem is the basic question of whether to continue producing substantial quantities of waste in the medium to long-run.

In the medium run, we have to think seriously about the upside benefits of nuclear power and whether they are enough to the risk to later generaitons.  Upside benefits seem likely mostly in terms of avoidance of carbon emissions, so as to limit what we have already seen to be the severe downside risks of climate change.  Whether nuclear should be part of the medium-term strategy depends in part on how optimistic we are about alternate technologies.

In the long-run, however, it is hard to see how we could justify continued production of nuclear wastes, given the tremendous uncertainties about containment – at least if we care about the welfare of distant generations. There may be alternative ways of using nuclear reactions to produce power that do not result in the production of such long-lived, dangerous waste.  But as other non-carbon energy sources such as solar become more widespread and cost-effective, the upside benefits from nuclear will fade, leaving us in a situation where the imposition on our descendants becomes increasingly hard to justify.

This Week on Legal Planet

Photo: Obama in Copenhagen earlier this year

Oct 30 Should Obama Go To Copenhagen?
President Obama has, of course, already been to Copenhagen once this year – in his quest to bring the Olympics to Chicago -  and brought… [read more]

Oct 29 101 (Or So) Useful Responses to Climate Skeptics
I know a lot of people who have occasion, for one reason or another, to deal with climate skeptics.  Sometimes this happens at public events, sometimes… [read more]

Oct 29 Climate and Energy Research @ Berkeley
Berkeley, like UCLA, is on the forefront of research on climate change and energy policy.  There’s a lot going on here — ranging from breakthroughs… [read more]

The Ghostly New Halloween Super-Villain

Warning: this thing will have more sequels than Friday the 13th!  In fact, it will still be playing in your neighborhood theater for decades to come. 

Should Obama Go To Copenhagen?

President Obama has, of course, already been to Copenhagen once this year — in his quest to bring the Olympics to Chicago —  and brought nothing home to show for it.  The stakes for the December United Nations Climate Change Conference are obviously much higher:  the negotiation of an international agreement to govern greenhouse gas emissions when the Kyoto Protocol expires.   But the first Copenhagen trip makes the question of whether Obama should go back to attend the December conference that much trickier.  For political and symbolic reasons, should Obama go?  On the one hand, if he found time to fly to Cophenhagen to persuade the International Olympic Committee that Chicago should get the Olympics, surely he should return in an attempt to persuade the international community to tackle a far more serious issue.  On the other hand, the stakes are much higher so that failure could have more far-reaching consequences:  if Obama attends and the conference produces no agreement he may lose significant political face.  The Obama Administration has  at least so far signaled that Obama won’t go:  Press Secretary Robert Gibbs has said that “the meeting that’s currently set [is] not necessarily a head of state meeting” and unnamed White House sources are saying that it’s “hard to see the benefit” of Obama going to Copenhagen.

A related question is whether a visit from Obama would make any actual difference in helping secure an international agreement.  Obama is obviously hampered by the fact that the Senate has not and almost certainly will not have passed climate legislation when negotiators convene in Copenhagen.  So Obama may have little to offer to bolster a weak U.S. position on the issue.  On the other hand, things can change between now and then.  David Victor, for example, predicts that the U.S. and China will have a deal on climate policy that will be announced when Obama visits China a month before the Copenhagen talks.  If he’s right, Obama can point to the new agreement, together with the fact that for the first time ever the House of Representatives has actually passed a comprehensive climate bill; that the Administration has adopted national emissions standards for automobiles;  that the Environmental Protection Agency has taken action to regulate greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act; and that Congress allocated significant stimulus money for energy efficiency, renewable energy and transmission line improvement as evidence that the U.S. is now making significant progress on the issue.  So if the U.S. delegation thinks it has enough to offer to provide leadership toward a new agreement, a visit from Obama could be just enough to push negotiators over the top.  But if it appears that the weakness of the U.S. position, together with intransigence from China and India, make an agreement nearly impossible, Obama — perhaps obviously — will sit Copenhagen out.