Cross-posted from Legal Planet.
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.
Full textCross-posted from Legal Planet.
Both the NY Times and the Washington Post had lead stories [Wednesday] on the politics of climate change legislation. The Post’s story centered on the increasing focus of the debate on the economic impact of climate legislation and on the difficulty of establishing the facts:
In anticipation, groups on the left and the right — as well as government outfits such as the Environmental Protection Agency and Congressional Budget Office — have issued a spate of analyses projecting the costs and, sometimes, the benefits of congressional climate legislation. But the fine print in many of these projections reveals that they are based on assumptions that could easily turn out otherwise, meaning lawmakers will have to take a leap of faith about how a cap-and-trade program — which would control pollution by providing economic incentives to reduce emissions — might affect the economy.
It seems to me that the “high cost” estimates are implausible on political rather than economic grounds — if the legislation turns out to cause large unemployment or price spikes for consumers, it will be speedily modified. In addition, history shows that all environmental legislation has been accompanied by similar alarmist warnings, which haven’t come to pass.
The Times lead with a story about the Obama Administration’s increased efforts to advance legislation. Opponents complain about the cost of the legislation, but also that the bill is so complex and that Congress is being asked to acted too quickly. (If this were not a serious academic blog, I would had “haha” or a smiley face at this point.)
I have some sympathy with complaints that the bill is too complex and needs more study — but only a limited amount. The bill is so complex largely because of the need to accommodate the same parochial interests that are now whining about its complexity, and we would never pass any legislation on any subject if waited until we had finished studying the problem.
There is something to be said for the approach that California took with AB 32 — identify the goal, provide a bit of guidance about means, and turn the details over to an administrative agency. But I don’t see anyone in Congress advocating that way of cutting the Gordian knot.
It’s very hard to gauge the legislative situation from the outside. How many of the complaints are real, and how many are simply bargaining ploys? No way of knowing, really. But I have the sense that much of what we are hearing in public is only loosely connected with whatever serious deal-making is takng place behind the scenes.
Full textSuper Freakonomics, which came out last week, has been critiqued thoroughly (UCS has a good library of their own critiques and links to others) for its embrace of geoengineering as the cheap fix to that problem called global warming, and the book's methods generally have also been critiqued as lacking.
But yesterday brought a new whopper from co-author Steven Levitt, on the Diane Rehm Show:
"Of course, ocean acidification is an import issue. Now, there are ways to deal with ocean acidification, right, it's actually, that's actually, we know exactly how to un-acidifiy the oceans, is to pour a bunch of base into it, so, so if that turns out to be an incredibly big problem, then we can deal with that."
The interview is here; the quote is at 20:15 in the audio. (Update: the specific audio clip is here)
Well, problem solved!
For a little review of why the problem is, of course, not simply solved by dumping base into the oceans, see the Royal Society's review of the literature on this (page 45 of the PDF of their ocean acidification report). NRDC also has a useful library on ocean acidification generally.
Levitt goes on the Daily Show tonight.
Update: Tim Lambert points out a new claim by Dubner that they 'address' ocean acidification in the book, when in fact they don't.
Full textAs climate change legislation awaits action in the Senate, serious and complicated legal and policy questions about the tools designed to reduce carbon emissions remain. Truly, the climate change debate operates in two distinct worlds. The first is becoming increasingly hysterical, consisting of sensational and camera-ready protests and attacks underwritten by groups such as the American Petroleum Institute and the National Association of Manufacturers. The second rages below the media waterline, in the wonky weeds of policy and legal scholarship. The pitchforks aren’t out in the second realm, but issues debated are crucial nevertheless.
CPR Member Scholars Bill Funk, Lesley McAllister, and Victor Flatt have recently published articles discussing several important aspects of both existing and emerging efforts to reduce carbon emissions.
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I thought that the Alan Carlin story -- the 'suppressed' climate change skeptic at EPA -- was over.
After the initial debunkings, the story kept going, but then I thought the NYT really put it to rest in late September. Apparently not for everyone.
Carlin, many have noted, is an economist at EPA, not a climate scientist. He has one Ph.D. - in economics. But that's no matter. The Wall Street Journal's Kimberley Strassel wanted more on the story, and wrote this. Strassel refers to Carlin as a "career EPA scientist." What a scoop!
Full textThis post is the sixth in a series from CPR Member Scholars examining different aspects of the Boxer-Kerry bill on climate change, which was released September 30.
Though the Boxer-Kerry bill's take on climate change adaptation is similar to the approach adopted by the House of Representatives through the American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES), a number of significant features are different (see my post from May, with Holly Doremus, analyzing an early version of that bill's provisions on adaptation). Like ACES, the Boxer-Kerry bill seeks more centralized executive oversight of federal and state natural resource adaptation, but it drops a number of details from ACES on international and domestic adaptation while adding several new funding programs for state and utility adaptation efforts. In the end, the adaptation provisions are an important step, but have some of the same key weaknesses as those in ACES.
Like ACES, this bill’s climate adaptation section, included in large part in Title III, §§341-384, would include or require:
This new framework would mark a substantial shift in natural resource management in the United States, leading to a significant centralization of decision-making authority over natural resources. Not only would all federal natural resource adaptation plans have to be consistent with the National Resources Climate Change Adaptation Strategy; any state that would like to receive federal funding to assist it to adapt its natural resources to the effects of climate change would have to submit its plan to the Interior Department. More significantly, to be approved a state’s adaptation plan would have to be consistent with the detailed provisions of the bill on state plans as well as the adopted federal National Resources Climate Change Adaptation Strategy.
Full textThis post is the fifth in a series from CPR Member Scholars examining different aspects of the Boxer-Kerry bill on climate change, which was released September 30.
To expand a bit on some of what Bill Buzbee discussed in his excellent analysis of the Boxer-Kerry bill on CPRBlog, it is critical to ensure that the implementation of a new climate change regime is done in a way that is prompt and efficient, but also accountable. An effective bill needs to hold government and private actors accountable for their new climate change obligations and actions. Such accountability is key to ensuring that there is confidence in the new cap-and-trade market and that we actually obtain the greenhouse gas reductions we need. In particular, we should focus on the citizen enforcement provisions of the bill and the management of offsets.
The bill incorporates the Clean Air Act enforcement provisions, including its citizen suit provisions that allow citizens to sue government to force it enforce the law (sections 126-27). That’s good. But it would be even better if the bill had its own citizen suit provision, as Bill Buzbee notes. Further, the bill would be even stronger if it made an effort to clarify the uncertain law on standing -- whether and which citizens can bring claims to help avert climate change. As I wrote in my blog entry on Waxman-Markey, citizen enforcement suits are a critical supplement to government enforcement of the law’s violations against greenhouse gas dischargers and a means of holding government itself accountable for carrying out environmental programs properly. Citizen standing is a particularly challenging issue because of the widespread nature of the harm from global warming – it will be difficult to say that any individual citizen’s harm is “particularized” and distinctively different from the harm suffered by others. A clear congressional indication that citizens should be able to bring claims despite the widespread nature of the harm is likely to be helpful in the courts. The bill would be stronger if it added such language to a citizen suit provision.
Full textThis post is the fourth in a series from CPR Member Scholars examining different aspects of the Boxer-Kerry bill on climate change, which was released September 30
The Boxer-Kerry bill released on September 30, 2009 is yet another massive piece of proposed legislation. And it is likely to get even larger as details are added regarding distribution of pollution allowances, and as other gaps and shortcomings are addressed. Its basic architecture and enforcement provisions, however, give us a good feel for the bill’s basic functioning. It retains some of the best elements of the Waxman-Markey bill passed by the House and improves on others, but it leaves unresolved some fundamental choices that could lead to implementation uncertainties down the road. In particular, this analysis will focus first on error risks, especially on the extent to which the bill allows for regulatory agencies to fix mechanisms in the bill that fail to perform, or adjust for assumptions that turn out to be wrong. This analysis will then look at federalism and enforcement provisions that are among the mechanisms that can keep an enacted climate bill on track and also help address shortcomings in the law’s accomplishments.
Full textThis post is the third in a series from CPR Member Scholars examining different aspects of the Boxer-Kerry bill on climate change, which was released September 30.
The Boxer-Kerry bill, like the Waxman-Markey bill that passed the House, provides for funding, study, and emissions allowances for Carbon Capture and Sequestration (CCS). In terms of developing a technology in the short-term to significantly reduce CO2 emissions from power plants, this is sound policy. On the other hand, it will be important to ensure that funding, CO2 allowances, and other support for CCS deployment do not shift the focus away from the imperative need to support and develop the necessary transition toward greater energy efficiency and more sustainable energy production.
In both a CPR Perspectives Piece and an earlier CPRBlog entry, I discussed CCS technology and the pros and cons of CCS. The Boxer-Kerry bill (like Waxman-Markey) requires that the Secretaries of EPA and Energy submit a comprehensive report to Congress setting forth a strategy to address the key legal and regulatory barriers to the commercial-scale deployment of CCS and federal, state, or regional legislation that could address those barriers. The bill also creates a task force to study and report to Congress on laws and regulations related to CCS, including those covering liabilities and risk and subsurface property rights as well as insurance and other risk management provisions available. EPA must develop a process to identify, certify, and permit CCS storage sites while safeguarding water and public health. The bill authorizes fossil fuel-based electricity distribution utilities to hold a referendum on the establishment of a Carbon Storage Research Corporation. If approved by entities representing two-thirds of the nation’s fossil fuel-based delivered electricity, the Corporation would be operated as a division or affiliate of the Electric Power Research Institute and would assess fees totaling approximately $1 billion annually for ten years, to be used by the Corporation to fund the large-scale demonstration of CCS technologies in order to accelerate the commercial availability of those technologies. Finally, the bill imposes performance standards related to CO2 on new coal plants.
Full textThis post is the second in a series from CPR Member Scholars examining different aspects of the Boxer-Kerry bill on climate change, which was released September 30.
Wednesday was a big day for advocates of traditional regulation. While the Waxman-Markey bill proposed exempting greenhouse gases (GHGs) from key Clean Air Act (CAA) provisions, the Boxer-Kerry bill proposes a greenhouse gas (GHG) cap-and-trade program to complement rather than replace the CAA’s standard authority to establish regulations for stationary sources of air pollutants. Almost simultaneously, EPA proposed a rule that would set the stage for applying CAA standards for new and modified sources on the nation’s biggest GHG emitters.
Most of the Clean Air Act’s existing authority is retained under the Boxer-Kerry bill. That means that EPA can establish standards for all new facilities and for existing facilities that significantly modify their plants. (More specifically, EPA can develop generic “new source performance standards” for new and modified facilities, and can require these facilities to go through a more detailed “new source review” process that generally imposes additional requirements.)
In addition, the Boxer-Kerry bill supplements the Clean Air Act’s regulatory authority over brand new coal-fired power plants by setting future emission reduction requirements for them. Plants that receive permits between 2009 and 2019 must achieve a 50-percent reduction in emissions by 2025 (or sooner if commercial large-scale carbon capture and sequestration is already in use). Plants that receive permits from 2020 on must achieve a 65-percent reduction in emissions. (Section 812(b)) The provisions provide utilities considering future investments in coal with advance notice that emissions from coal-fired plants will be constrained.
The Boxer-Kerry bill preempts only a narrow slice of Clean Air Act authority. It temporarily precludes EPA from establishing regulations that would interfere with uncovered sources’ ability to generate offsets. (Section 811.) The preemption is narrow, since it applies only to entities that are not covered by the cap-and-trade program and the trading program covers a broad range of entities. (See section 700(13), defining “covered entity.”)
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