Climate Policy

Forty years ago, the steel mills and factories south of Chicago were known for their sooty smokestacks, plumes of steam, and throngs of workers. Clean-air laws have since gotten rid of the smoke, and labor-productivity initiatives have eliminated most of the workers. What remains is the steam, billowing up into the sky day after day, just as it did a generation ago.

The U.S. economy wastes 55 percent of the energy it consumes, and while American companies have ruthlessly wrung out… more

It is individual states and not Washington that will lead the United States response to climate change, says Terry Tamminen, friend and adviser to California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.

"I couldn't agree more that the U.S. has to step up. The good news -- it is already happening," Tamminen said.

The former head of California's Environmental Protection Agency was in Wellington to give the keynote speech to a Chapman Tripp symposium on climate change, and to extend to Prime Minister Helen Clark an… more

Al Gore and Newt Gingrich are very different figures, but they are both going through a similar process: They are becoming elder statesmen.

And how does one become an elder statesman, anyway? It’s an easy, two-step process: First, have something important to say and be tireless in saying it. Second, stop running for president, because then people will let their guard down; they will listen to the substance of your message, not worry about tracking your upward political mobility.

Oh, and a… more

Energy experts with Glendale-based Johnson Controls Inc. are busy crafting their first proposal aimed at winning a piece of an ambitious $5 billion plan to reduce global warming by retrofitting energy-wasting buildings in 16 of the world's largest cities.

Step one: Houston, one of the country's most polluted cities, where more than 270 buildings could see upgrades.

Meeting in Milwaukee last week, managers and experts from Johnson Controls offices around the country scoured slides of aging boilers and control systems in… more

Venture capitalists are not known to haunt Sproul Plaza, with its drummers and dreamers, but last spring Silicon Valley’s financiers showed up in force. On March 21 they filed across the flagstones and into the Student Union auditorium to hear such scintillating discussions as “Carbon Regulation and the Impact on Innovation,” and “Energy Storage: Hydrogen, Batteries, and Beyond.” The draw was not the topics, but rather the 400 people sitting in the folding chairs. They encompassed the entire energy universe… more

The better science gets at describing climate change with computer models and probabilities, the harder it is for the rest of us to understand. Recently I’ve resorted to an admittedly lazy mixture of superstition and branding: every big hurricane, every freak April snowstorm, every early-blooming tulip is mentally tagged: "Brought to you by global warming." But of course, this is more "mediarology" than meteorology, to borrow a term from one of the scientists Chris Mooney interviews in his new book,… more

Almost every American can tell you about the Exxon Valdez oil spill. This spill is a national yardstick for environmental catastrophe and rightly so: oil covered so much of the Alaskan coast that, had it taken place further south, it would have covered every inch of beach between Oregon and Mexico. Although Exxon claims it spilled 11 million gallons of crude oil into Prince William Sound’s pristine waters, the true number is much larger.

But as big a disaster as… more

It was a legal knockout. Last week the U.S. Supreme Court told President Bush that he can no longer hide behind the federal Clean Air Act in pleading that he is powerless to fight global warming. The Court rebuked the President and sided with a dozen states that had sued the federal government for the right to slow the pollution that is warming the earth.

The lawyers may still be sorting through the historic case’s legal implications, but the political… more