The Environmental Forum

Volume 35 Issue 2

March-April 2018

This issue's articles are available below.

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An Essential Strategy

LEAD FEATURE ❧ Achieving an energy economy based entirely on renewables quickly enough to meet the Paris goal of 2ºC is a high-risk strategy. Removing carbon dioxide from waste streams and burying it is necessary — as may be extraction of the gas from the atmosphere.

By Alan Biller
Consultant

With SIDEBARs by a law firm attorney | a carbon-based NGO official.

Revenue Use Matters

CENTERPIECE ❧ Pricing carbon and using some or all of the proceeds to provide strategic, cost-effective subsidies could achieve deeper, faster emissions cuts than a conventional price alone — without increasing costs to industry or consumers.

By Donald Goldberg and Dave Grossman
Climate Law & Policy Project, Green Light Group Consulting
Bottling Up Science

COVER STORY ❧ The administration is booting experts from advisory panels. Inconvenient studies are shut down early. Officials are forbidden from using certain words. But as professional integrity is compromised, scientists are getting creative in blunting the damage.

By Michael Halpern
Union of Concerned Scientists

With SIDEBARs by EPA’s science office | a think tank scholar | a progressive activist.

Delivering Climate Change Progress

TESTIMONY ❧ No baseball team picks players in 2018 the way it did in 1978. Nor does any business do marketing today the same way it did in decades past. Environmental protection, however, remains stuck in a top-down 20th century regulatory model. But new tools and strategies, including carbon pricing, could unleash a sustainability revolution that drives innovation — and delivers a transformed energy future.

By Dan Esty
Yale University
The Debate: Chesapeake Bay Getting Healthier But New Gains Face Funding Cuts, Po

THE DEBATE ❧ EPA’s Chesapeake Bay Program has produced impressive results. The bay states’ ambitious Clean Water Blueprint survived a legal challenge, and federal, state, and local governments have achieved impressive pollution reductions. But as the states ramp up their efforts, there is a standoff in Washington about funding.

By Nick DiPasquale, Dena Leibman, Ben Grumbles, Cindy Adams Dunn, Verna Harrison and Jon Mueller
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Chesapeake Bay Program (2011-17), Chesapeake Alliance for Sustainable Agriculture, Maryland Department of the Environment, Pa. Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, Verna Harrison, LLC, Chesapeake Bay Foundation
By: David P. Clark

As regulators retreat, is corporate sustainability up to the challenge?

By: Craig M. Pease

Science: it’s not about rules and process but, rather, about anarchy.

By: Linda K. Breggin

States step up regional climate change gas mitigation markets.

By: Kathleen Barrón

Recent cold weather shows grid’s reliance on oil, upping emissions.

By: Richard Lazarus

Will 2018 be the Year of the Bird? If so, not necessarily a good one.

By: Ethan Shenkman

Environmental lawyers pay close attention to Trump v. California.

By: Robert N. Stavins

World’s largest carbon market is scheduled for 2020 launch in China.

By: Stephen R. Dujack

Arctic dreams among the Inukshuks on melting Greenland’s endangered icecap.

By: Ridgway Hall

Is Napa Valley a sustainable Garden of Eden?

By: Laura Frederick

Colleagues’ new jobs, promotions, and achievements.

By: Laura Frederick

Aiding communities flooded by storms, sea-level rise.

By: Amy Streitwieser

More bog for the buck.

By: Scott Fulton

On why we want policy not waste.