Environmental Policy & Law

Fellow David Gonzalez reports on his experiences at the Switzer Spring Retreat Policy Communications Training and the UC Grad Research Advocacy Day.

Energy issues create challenges and opportunities every year for local decision makers, writes Henry Herndon about New Hampshire. Challenges are not only in cost, but also in the vagaries of the State House. Opportunities lie in the marketplace for cost-saving technologies that are competing with traditional monopolistic energy services. Favorable state policies can help to cultivate these market-based alternatives, provided those policies remain in place.

As the Trump administration slashes federal estimates of the future costs of climate change, new research suggests that even the much higher cost calculated by the Obama administration might be too low.

Vermont has a problem. The state is $1.2 billion short of the funding it will need to meet federal targets for reducing pollution in state waterways. To solve that problem, Gov. Phil Scott suggested a creative solution last week in his budget address: Turning the pollutant into a commodity and selling it out of state. The pollutant is phosphorus, a primary ingredient of fertilizer, which is widely used in farming. ...

In its first year, the Trump Administration undertook a program of extensive climate change deregulation. The Administration delayed and initiated the reversal of rules that reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from stationary and mobile sources; sought to expedite fossil fuel development, including in previously protected areas; delayed or withdrew energy efficiency standards; undermined consideration of climate change in environmental review; and hindered adaptation to the impacts of climate change.

When people look back at Donald Trump's first year as president, they're likely to be perplexed by his actions on climate change.

A new report from the US Government Accountability Office (GAO), a top government watchdog, says the yearly cost of climate change to the federal government is tens of billions of dollars and rising rapidly — yet US President Donald Trump still refuses to acknowledge basic science.

Just hours after President Trump’s Rose Garden speech in June announcing plans to withdraw from the 2015 Paris climate agreement, the governors of three states — California, Washington, and New York — announced their remedy. They formed the U.S. Climate Alliance, and called on other states to join them in continuing to push ahead on fighting climate change. ...

For years, timber barons in Peru have sent lumber to the US by the shipload. But many of the groves they harvested were pure fiction.