Climate Change Economics May Trump Politics

Last week hundreds of thousands of Americans took to the streets to protest what they saw as the evisceration of environmental legislation and a rollback of US efforts to stem the tide of climate change.

Protests in Washington, Boston, New York, San Francisco, Chicago, Seattle and other American cities coincided with the culmination of President Donald Trump’s first 100 days. Over that period, most of the political victories that the new administration has notched have been around environmental and climate science — chiefly rolling back policies enacted by the previous Obama Administrations.

Landmark California Climate Law Directs Electric Utilities to Displace Oil Companies

Within 15 years, California will generate at least half of its electricity from renewable resources and double savings from energy efficiency gains, two milestones included in Senate Bill (SB) 350. News coverage of this bill prior to its passage overlooked these monumental targets and focused on the oil companies' unsightly lobbying to remove a petroleum reduction goal from the bill. Meanwhile, few have noticed the provisions of Senator de León's legislation that make replacing oil as the dominant transportation fuel a core mission of the electric industry -- allowing Californians to "fill up" at home on cleaner electricity that's the cost equivalent of dollar-a-gallon gas.