Government & Business

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February 21, 2012 | 5:26 PM | By

Resignation and Remorse: Gleick Faces Fallout from Heartland Documents Leak

The Pacific Institute is standing by its founder, but other consequences are piling up

Craig Miller/KQED

Peter Gleick is a co-founder of the Pacific Institute, a research group based in Oakland.

Climate scientist Peter Gleick, who last night admitted that he was the source of leaked documents from the Heartland Institute, has resigned from the American Geophysical Union’s Task Force on Scientific Ethics. Gleick was chair of the task force, which met for the first time last November. According to a press release from the AGU, Gleick resigned last Thursday — after the explosive documents appeared on various blogs but before his online admission as perpetrator.

He’s also stepped down from a position which he hadn’t yet officially begun with the National Center for Science Education, an organization that advocates for evolution and climate change education in schools. Gleick was scheduled to begin serving on its board this week, but tendered his resignation yesterday.

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FILED UNDER: Government & Business, Heartland Institute, Pacific Institute, Peter Gleick
February 21, 2012 | 11:04 AM | By

Bay Area Scientist Owns up to Lying to Get Heartland Documents

The Pacific Institute’s Peter Gleick says he was blinded by frustration when he used subterfuge to obtain and leak the internal documents

Earlier this month, documents were allegedly leaked from the Heartland Institute — a think tank that questions human-caused climate change — which describe elements of the organization’s strategy to discredit climate science, and include background on funders. Now climate scientist Peter Gleick, the founder of the Pacific Institute, has admitted to using deception to obtain the information.

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FILED UNDER: Government & Business, gleick, Heartland Institute, Pacific Institute
February 17, 2012 | 3:51 PM | By

Challenges for EPA’s Top Man In San Francisco

The latest in our series of television interviews with climate change thought leaders

Just about two years ago, Jared Blumenfeld took charge of the Environmental Protection Agency’s largest West Coast office, promising “revolutionary” strides forward. But it’s been a tough slog on the climate front, given the political climate in Washington.

Climate Watch Senior Editor Craig Miller sat down with Jared Blumenfeld, Administrator for EPA’s Pacific Southwest Region, to talk climate, green business and smart growth. Their interview airs this weekend on This Week in Northern California, on KQED Public Television 9. The segment is edited from a longer interview; here’s a clip that’s not in the TV version.

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FILED UNDER: Government & Business, EPA, this week in northern california
February 16, 2012 | 2:03 PM | By

Tesla’s Model X: Sleek, Climate-Friendly and Made in California

Tesla is blazing a trail for electric vehicles, but its sky-high prices are still a barrier


Tesla Motors

Production on Tesla's Model X begins in 2013.

On February 8th, Tesla Motors CEO, Elon Musk, unveiled the company’s latest electric car: The Model X. Probably the sleekest and sexiest SUV you’ve ever seen, and also the priciest. But what’s most remarkable — beyond the falcon wings — is that the car will be manufactured here in the Golden State, at the former NUMMI plant in Fremont.

Why did Tesla choose to locate its headquarters and manufacturing in the high-priced San Francisco Bay Area? Was it linked to the state’s ambitious clean energy targets and policies? The new rules approved last month by the California Air Resources Board require automakers to produce 1.4 million zero-emission cars for the California market by 2025, and are part of the aggressive goal of reducing the state’s emissions 80% by 2050.

Tesla spokesperson Khobi Brooklyn eschewed policy explanations and told me, “We wanted to build our cars in California, not only creating jobs in the U.S., but also California specifically.” She cited Silicon Valley as “an incredibly rich pool of talent” and said that purchasing an existing car manufacturing facility saved money and time in preparing for car production. I’ve no doubt the California sales tax rebates on capital equipment purchasing (estimated at $20 Million) helped too.

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FILED UNDER: Government & Business, KQED Blogs, clean-tech, electric vehicles
February 15, 2012 | 12:19 PM | By

Leaked Documents Describe Corporate Agenda to Discredit Climate Science

Bay Area climate scientist named in disputed document

The climate corner of the Blogosphere exploded this week with the alleged leak of numerous documents from one of the nation’s most ardent opponents of action to slow global warming.

It started when DeSmogBlog published a series of documents that its editors said were leaked to them, revealing much of the playbook for the Heartland Institute. If authentic, the documents would validate longstanding complaints that corporate interests have been bankrolling a deliberate campaign of disinformation, aimed at casting doubt on legitimate climate science, and that Heartland has been an important channel for this campaign. Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Government & Business, The Science, climate skeptics, Heartland Institute, Peter Gleick
February 9, 2012 | 7:05 PM | By

Climate Adaptation and Unintended Consequences

Radio documentary explores the social and economic impacts of adapting to climate change

Rising seas will irrevocably change life near the San Francisco Bay. That’s the premise of RISE: Climate Change and Coastal Communities, a three-part documentary by independent producer Claire Schoen. The final part, “Chuey’s Story,” airs this evening at 8 pm on KQED 88.5 FM.

By Claire Schoen

Jan Sturmann

Chuey Cazares works as a fisherman out of the South Bay town of Alviso. Adapting to climate change may save his town, but it's having unintended consequences for his livelihood.

There’s an old adage that goes something like this: “The human capacity to create technology exceeds our capacity to understand its impact.”

Lots of people have referred to this idea, Einstein perhaps most famously when he said, “The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking and we thus drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.” Splitting the atom certainly brought us the promise of unlimited energy to run industry and military might to protect the world from Hitler. It also brought us a nuclear North Korea and Fukushima.

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FILED UNDER: Government & Business, Water, adaptation, San Francisco Bay, sea level rise
February 9, 2012 | 4:00 PM | By

State Analyst: Cap & Trade Plan Good as Far as it Goes

But what happens after 2020?

A non-partisan analysis of California’s recently approved cap-and-trade program says state regulators at the Air Resources Board (CARB) did a decent job of balancing competing directives, but warns that legislators need to start thinking about what happens after the program runs its course, less than a decade from now.

Craig Miller

“The legislature and the Air Board need to provide some certainty of what the regulatory landscape will look like after 2020, so that the regulated community can start planning and making appropriate investments,” Mark Newton of the Legislative Analyst’s Office (LAO) told me in a telephone interview. The state’s greenhouse gas emissions reduction law, AB 32, sets a goal of reducing California’s emissions to 1990 levels by 2020. “AB 32 leaves open the door to changes being made,” said Newton, “but it doesn’t provide any specificity about a new goal that you’ll be reaching after the 2020 goals are met.”

In other words, industries regulated under the program have no idea what will happen after 2020, although the legislative intent — and California environmental history — points to further regulation. It took regulators a solid four years to get their carbon trading plan off the ground, so planning ahead seems prudent.

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FILED UNDER: Government & Business
February 7, 2012 | 10:05 PM | By

California, Clean Energy, and the Obama Promise

What does the President’s vow not to “walk away from the promise of clean energy” mean for California?

By Alison van Diggelen

President Obama made a strong State of the Union commitment not to walk away from the promise of clean energy. Was it a shrewd long-term strategy or a political liability that will result in even more “Solyndras” here in California?

On the one hand, Obama’s clean energy focus has helped expand the clean energy job market, into a sector with more than 2.7 million jobs, with investments in smart power grid, energy efficiency, electric cars and renewable power. In 2011, the federal clean energy push led to a remarkable $56 billion investment in the sector, surpassing even China’s. Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Government & Business
February 3, 2012 | 2:27 PM | By

The Unequal Effects of Climate Change

Low-income communities in CA are more vulnerable to climate change-related health risks

GABRIEL BOUYS/AFP/Getty Images

The most at-risk families are lower-income and live in more urban areas than the less vulnerable familes.

A study by the California Department of Public Health finds that people in poorer areas of Los Angeles and Fresno Counties are more at risk of ill health effects from climate change than those in wealthier neighborhoods. The report found that in LA, neighborhoods on the coast were the most vulnerable, mostly because of sea-level rise, though it also blamed “poor public transit, wildfire risk, and a large proportion of elderly living alone.” In Fresno, there were similar issues (aside from the obvious fact that sea-level rise won’t directly affect the landlocked county).

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FILED UNDER: Government & Business, environmental justice, Public Health
February 2, 2012 | 4:36 PM | By

Insurance Industry Awakening to Climate Risks

California will require all major insurers to survey and report climate risks

Insurers in California, Washington, and New York will be required to describe the steps they're taking to address climate change.

Insurance commissioners in three states, including California, are now requiring that insurers report on how they’re preparing for climate change. Insurers will fill out a survey, which was adopted by The National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC) in 2009, but was never implemented by commissioners in all fifty states. Instead, it’s been a piecemeal approach. California administered the survey in 2009 and ’10, requiring all insurers that met a minimum size requirement and that were headquartered in the state to fill it out. Now California is expanding the initiative: all insurers that write premiums worth more than $300 million and do business in the state–not just those based here–will be required to fill out the survey. New York and Washington are doing the same.

The Climate Risk Survey covers general questions: does the company have a climate change policy with respect to risk management and investment management, has the company considered the impact of climate change on its investment portfolio, does the insurer have a plan to assess or mitigate its own emissions?  Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Government & Business, extreme weather, insurance