Environmental Policy & Law

Fellow Story

Hsu panelist on Guardian podcast about big data's usefulness for sustainability

Advances in technology mean the amount of digital information we collectively possess is growing exponentially. Estimates suggest that by 2020 there will be 300 times more information in the world than there was in 2005. Big data has the power to transform the way corporations understand the impact of their business on the environment, and prompt them to take action on sustainability. But storing and gathering this data is costly in itself, with large data servers located across the world consuming huge amounts of energy and adding to carbon emissions.
March 24, 2014
Fellow Story

Lessons Learned About Working with Policymakers in Passing Nation's First Lead Ammunition Ban

In October 2013, California's Governor Jerry Brown signed AB 711, making it illegal to use lead ammunition for hunting, a ban that will be phased in from 2015 to 2019. For UC Santa Cruz environmental toxicologists Donald Smith and 1998 Switzer Fellow Myra Finkelstein, the bill represents the translation of years of scientific research into a new policy to protect people and wildlife from lead poisoning.
March 23, 2014
Fellow Story

How Twitter Can Lead to a Big Opportunity: 3 Lessons from @hansenevan

You work hard every day on issues affecting the health of residents in your state. You release reports about the dangers of fracking and other critical environmental issues. You try to link economic development with natural resource stewardship. You tweet and blog and host webinars to get the issues out to the public. But if you live in a state like West Virginia, you’re literally swimming upstream struggling for recognition of the big issues in the face of policymakers tied to a carbon-based future.
March 23, 2014
Fellow Story

Uhl builds on new study to push for curbing methane emissions from natural gas

The amount of methane leaking from natural gas emissions is far higher than previously estimated, a new study shows, more evidence, as one expert says, that urgent action must be taken to reduce these greenhouse gas emissions. ... "The study by Brandt et al. adds to a growing body of evidence suggesting that EPA's estimates of methane emissions from the oil and gas sector are too low," Sarah Uhl, Senior Project Director at the Clean Air Task Force, a Boston-based public health and environment advocacy group, said in a statement sent to Common Dreams.
March 21, 2014
Fellow Story

Connecticut Faces Big Shifts on Energy, Recycling

by Luther Turmelle, New Haven Register If Robert Klee is daunted by the challenge that lies ahead as the state’s next Department of Energy and Environmental Protection commissioner, he doesn’t show it.
March 17, 2014
Fellow Story

Bradman research with CHAMACOS study finds pesticides harm the young brain

Even as the researchers have been trying to unravel the tangled effects of pesticides and other chemicals on children’s development, they’ve been devising practical ways to help the study’s participants reduce their risk of exposure—a rare example of community engagement by academic scientists. In a place that’s often sharply polarized between those who own the fields and those who work in them, CHAMACOS researchers have insisted on involving all sides.
March 14, 2014
Fellow Story

Klee awaiting confirmation as next commissioner of Connecticut's Department of Energy and Environmental Protection

If Robert Klee is daunted by the challenge that lies ahead as the state’s next Department of Energy and Environmental Protection commissioner, he doesn’t show it. The agency’s former chief of staff under then-Commissioner Dan Esty, Klee views his pending ascendancy to DEEP’s top job as an opportunity to remake Connecticut at a historic juncture. During an 90-minute interview last week at his office, Klee said the state is on the verge of seismic shifts in terms of energy, solid waste and recycling as well as reuse of brownfield properties across the state.
March 11, 2014
Fellow Story

Towards better worker and public safety

Switzer Fellows Evan Hansen and Mike Wilson testified before the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment & Public Works about how we might prevent chemical threats and improve safety at facilities across the country.
March 7, 2014
Fellow Story

Wheeler publishes on impacts of alternative patterns of urbanization on GHG emissions in an agricultural county

Different patterns of urban development may have widely varying long-term effects on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. To investigate such effects, we used UPlan geographic information system–based software to model three 2050 urban-growth scenarios for Yolo County, a predominantly agricultural area near Sacramento, Califor- nia. Two scenarios correspond to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s A2 and B1 storylines.
February 17, 2014
Fellow Story

Doerr co-authors article on investment and policy process in conservation monitoring

Despite decades of discussion and implementation, conservation monitoring remains a challenge. Many current solutions in the literature focus on improving the science or making more structured decisions. These insights are important but incomplete in accounting for the politics and economics of the conservation decisions informed by monitoring. Our novel depiction of the monitoring enterprise unifies insights from multiple disciplines (conservation, operations research, economics, and policy) and highlights many underappreciated factors that affect the expected benefits of monitoring.
February 11, 2014