Climate Change

The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) released a report this week on the costs of California’s progress in generating more electricity from renewable power and there was good news. Prices of new contract bids submitted to utilities last year were about 30 percent lower than in 2009, according to the report, signaling a more competitive future for the renewable power industry in California.

Nearly two decades after coming to the Hopkins Marine Station as an undergraduate in earth systems, Raphael D. Sagarin was again hunched over a tide pool identifying its briny inhabitants. His mentor, emeritus lecturer Chuck Baxter, stood on a nearby outcropping and called out helpful advice. It was a drippy coastal morning, with fog heavy enough to dampen paper and a raucous crowd of gulls hooting from the roof of the nearby lab. The shallow pools initially appeared abandoned at low tide, but a closer look revealed dozens of tiny creatures going about their underwater business.

Where has California's renewable energy policy been, and where it is going? What role have California's utilities played in promoting the development of clean electricity? What must utilities and state policy makers do to ensure California continues to lead on clean energy policies? Switzer Fellow Laura Wisland works on these issues every day in her role as Senior Energy Analyst for the Union of Concerned Scientists.

As an energy analyst at the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), Laura Wisland focuses on developing state policies that will effectively increase the amount of renewable energy used in California. She provides technical and policy analysis to legislative and regulatory agencies to successfully guide implementation of the state's renewables electricity standard and designs effective electricity sector climate change policies in accordance with the state's landmark global warming bill.

We urge all candidates for public office at national, state, and local levels, and all New Hampshire citizens, to acknowledge the overwhelming balance of evidence for the underlying causes of climate change, to support appropriate responses to reduce the emissions of greenhouse gases, and to develop local and statewide strategies to adapt to near-term changes in climate(5). Ignoring the issue of climate change places our health, our quality of life, our economic vitality, and our children’s future at risk. Read the letter

“Soil carbon offsets will promote a spate of African land grabs and put farmers under the control of fickle carbon markets,” said Teresa Anderson of the UK-based Gaia Foundation, an NGO that promotes indigenous farming, speaking in Durban. “The [World] Bank’s agenda is more money for the bank and for carbon project developers, not development,” said Doreen Stabinsky of the Minneapolis-based Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy.

There is little doubt that agriculture is both affected by and directly affects climate change. Exactly how to address agriculture within the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UFCCC), however, is not easy to answer. Before Durban, negotiating text had been circulating since before the 2009 Copenhagen climate summit, virtually unchanged for two years.