The End of California Agriculture?

U.S. Secretary of Energy Steven Chu reportedly said this week that climate change could mean "no more agriculture in California."  While Chu was referring to a worst-case scenario, in which the Sierra snowpack would be reduced by 90 percent, this a stark comment from a cabinet official.  

-Morgan

Futures

According to the Environmental Markets Newsletter, the Chicago Climate Exchange has begun trading in futures that will require, for contracts expiring in 2013 and later, the delivery of greenhouse gas emission allowances that would be usable for compliance with a mandatory U.S. greenhouse gas cap-and-trade program. (If there is no program by then, then other allowances may be delivered.) These contracts allow companies to hedge today against a future cap-and-trade program.

-Morgan

ABA Survey

The American Bar Association is conducting a very brief survey of lawyer attitudes towards the recession. I will be interested in the results if for no other reason than to see how long lawyers as a group think a legal recession will last. If the "wisdom of crowds" research holds true, this collective prediction may be worth reading.

-Morgan

California's Price Tag

The LA Times reports today on a study by two UC Berkeley researchers that puts the annual costs to California from climate change at $300 million to $3.9 billion. About $2.5 trillion of real estate assets in California are subject to threats associated with global warming.

-Morgan

Cap and Trade News

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601072&sid=aa8POBVmixHg

California's blueprint to address global warming won't include details of an emissions-trading program as regulators try to build consensus on how best to organize the market-based system.
The California Air Resources Board will begin a rule-writing process after next month's approval of the so-called scoping plan and is seeking outside help from experts to recommend ways to build a cap-and-trade system, said Mary Nichols, chairwoman of the rule- making panel. Under state law, the program must be ready to begin by 2012.

Draft Cap and Trade Legislation

The House Energy and Commerce Committee has released draft cap-and-trade legislation. On the key issue of whether allowances will be allocated by the government or auctioned, the draft legislation incorporates a range of possible alternatives, from mostly allocated to all auctioned. Under the latter scenario, 17.5 percent of the auction proceeds would be used to reduce the federal deficit with the rest distributed to consumers, energy efficiency and greenhouse gas reduction measures, and 0.5 percent for "management" -- federal agency management of the program.

-Morgan

Big Picture Facts

The legal literature on climate change tends to focus on particular issues, and only rarely reads the big picture facts that drive the issue.  A recent article in The New Yorker by Elizabeth Kolbert reported these key facts:

"This year, the world is expected to burn through some thirty-one billion barrels of oil, six billion tons of coal, and a hundred trillion cubic feet of natural gas.  The combustion of these fossil fuels will produce, in aggregate, some four hundred quadrillion B.T.U.s of energy.  It will also yield around thirty billion tons of carbon dioxide.  Next year, global consumption of fossil fuels is expected to grow by about two percent, meaning that emissions will rise by more than half a billion tons, and the following year consumption is expected to grow by another two percent.  

"When carbon dioxide is released into the air, about a third ends up, in relatively short order, in the oceans. . . . A quarter is absorbed by terrestrial ecosystems . . . and the rest remains in the atmosphere. . . ." 

-Morgan