With Iowa’s caucuses and New Hampshire’s first-in-the-nation primaries both in the rear view mirrors, GOP presidential candidates and the media now set their sights on South Carolina, which hosts the next nominating primary on January 21. Candidates and pundits can’t afford to ignore the Palmetto State: South Carolina Republicans have accurately predicted the party’s eventual [...]
Jennifer Rennicks contributed to this post. Dear Coastal Citizens: If you love the place we call home, please read on. I sympathize with those who feel that sea level rise sounds like “doomsday scenario” scare tactics or with the thought that a rising sea enveloping our beloved communities sounds like futuristic science fiction. I must [...]
[A recent SACE blogpost on extreme weather and climate change has been modified/updated to serve as a year-end climate action/policy recap for 2011] Setting records is typically an accomplishment we celebrate: running the fastest mile, being the first to achieve a goal or even recovering from the brink of extinction/extirpation. But in 2011, we set [...]
Earlier this month I had the opportunity to attend the Southeast Florida Regional Climate Leadership Summit, hosted by Monroe County—the county of the Florida Keys. The highlight of the event was the unveiling of the Southeast Florida Regional Climate Change Compact’s Climate Action Plan, which is the written formal response of Broward, Palm Beach, Miami-Dade, [...]
We set a new record in 2011, but not one that anyone would want to brag about. This year, the U.S. has been battered by 12 separate natural disasters, each sporting a $1 billion price tag. The final number could be higher still as damages from Tropical Storm Lee and a late October snowstorm in [...]
If you follow this blog regularly, you know that my posts tend towards technical and, well, boring. You’ll have to take that up with my editors. I assure you that my first drafts are always rollicking romps through environmental policy. I do recognize though that analyzing coal retirements and administrative rulemakings are informative at best. [...]
Thousands of world citizens are once again converging in South Africa to take part in an international gathering observed by a global audience. Unlike attendees at last year’s soccer World Cup, it’s a safe bet that negotiators, government officials, activists and observers from 195 countries at the 17th annual climate talks in Durban, South Africa [...]
On November 15, the EW3 (Energy and Water in a Warming World) Initiative released a report titled, Freshwater Use by U.S. Power Plants: Electricity’s Thirst for a Precious Resource. Across the Southeast the media paid close attention to the valuable new information in this report, and in large part because of the efforts of SACE staff [...]
Former Congressman Bob Inglis’ essay calls for conservatives to believe in the “power of free markets” and support a tax swap that creates a carbon tax because operators of power plants should be accountable for their actions. Inglis writes, Because conservatives know that there’s no such thing as a free lunch, we know that we’re [...]
Bob Inglis’ call to “simultaneously eliminat[e] all subsidies” for energy is another way that he believes we can use the “power of free markets” to make better choices about energy use. Although “subsidies” are often discussed, it is a concept that is hard to pin down. The World Trade Organization definition of a subsidy amounts [...]
