I’m going to Maine for two weeks starting Saturday. That means I’ll probably be blogging at most 2 hours a day on weekdays — yes, it wouldn’t be a true vacation if I couldn’t blog at all.
I will be giving a talk in Portland on Tuesday, August 18th at 7 pm. This is a state with two swing Senators after all! Details to come for all you New Englanders.
I aim to have a fair number of guest posts, though. I’m also trying a small change in my blogging style, to accommodate this trip and the time I need to spend working on my book through mid-September.
Normally, about 2/3 of my posts take me some 60 to 90 minutes to write and about 1/3 take 90 to 180 minutes. I’ve been trying to do more 30-minute posts in the last few days, in case you hadn’t noticed, and I expect to continue that for another month. If it proves successful, I’ll keep doing it.
Comments and suggestions welcome!
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Have a nice time. Something you might include in Senate analyses – incentives for early action.
Esp since Senators Chafee, Lieberman and Mack sponsored such plans in the 90s. And the following suggests
the W-M bill has tight limits on such efforts –
” In fact, only two out of 17 existing voluntary standards or U.S. regional trading schemes make the cut: . . .”
( Which might be a very good thing if they aren’t more restrictive than they need to be.) Lobbying by CCX, etc.
http://www.greenbiz.com/blog/2009/07/31/can-us-entice-polluters-early-reduction
shorter posts would be welcome, or at least shorter summaries (so i don’t get the whole post in googlereader).
Joe, You gotta be working so hard,enjoy your vacation! Lord knows you deserve it.
Enjoy
Relax
And get to know those strangers that are your family.
Joe, have a great vacation. As you contemplate shorter posts, you might want to look at Paul Krugman’s site (krugman.blogs.nytimes.com). He posts several times a day as thoughts strike him and reading him over time gives one a little insight to how his mind works (kind of arrogant assumption about a Nobel Laureate, but what the hey). It is not highly organized, but interesting and somewhat playful. Might be a good vacation style for you.
Maine’s senators Snowe and Collins, although republican, are consistently level-headed and have *extremely* high ratings on environmental issues from the League of Conservation Voters.
Maine has a very low population density and vast areas of unspoiled forest. Died-in-the-wool conservatives are far less likely to smoke fat cigars in their hot-tubs and far more likely to freeze their butts off camping, fishing, and hunting. In Maine, liberals and conservatives are nowhere near as far apart on environmental issues as in most states.
First, enjoy your vacation
Second, while I love the research and effort in your detailed posts, a few shorter posts are certainly welcome.
Thanks for your work Joe
brevity is the soul of wit.
thanks for your work, and enjoy your vacation!
How about limiting posts ‘twitter style’ to say, 350 characters, or some other CO2 concentration of significance. (Your choice, it’s your vacation.)
Have a great time, Joe.
Enjoy!
There is an old joke (I heard long ago, when living near Boston) about a lost out-of-state driver driving along a small back-road in Maine who asks a person from a small coastal town in Maine how to get back to the highway and on to the big city. After contemplating the matter for awhile, the local person replied “You can’t get there from here.”
I’ve enjoyed this joke, a lot, over the years.
Some people seem to argue that “we can’t address the global warming problem.” To them, it’s impossible. That’s the essence of their argument, even if they aren’t quite that explicit. To them, it’s helpful to point out the “You can’t get there from here” joke.
In philosophy, many people still believe that not only is there an important difference between ‘is’ and ‘ought’ (and there is, of course) but also that there is an insurmountable gap between them, that you can’t relate one to the other, and that under no circumstances can you “derive” any ‘ought’ from an understanding of what ‘is’. In other words, that “You can’t get there from here.” Again, the joke comes in handy.
You might want to keep this joke in mind. (If you like, I’ll write out the whole thing.) Whenever someone says “It’s impossible!” to something that isn’t really impossible at all, the joke serves a nice purpose.
Enjoy your vacation, Joe.
Be Well,
Jeff
Joe, I bet you will tap into that old New England wisdom – plain speaking, direct, wry. I want to hear what an old timer says about the winters… they remember. They just don’t get their words onto the Internet.
Joe, check this article out:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/09/science/earth/09climate.html?hp
I think they got it right, for once. And I see that argument as essential to winning over a number of skeptics in the Senate.
Try the Margaret Chase Smith Museum in Skowhegan for an idea of what conservatism used to be and could be again.
I think the world will survive without this blog being updated every day. There are about 400 other environmental blogs and websites, so enjoy your vacation. You’re covered.
I also think you should use your vacation to think about the wisdom of backing cap and trade legislation, which won’t go far enough to stop climate change. There are other, better ideas out here that don’t give coal all kinds of allowances.
[JR: I'm backing the only serious chance there now exists for serious U.S. -- and hence global -- action to aver catastrophic climate change. I have no idea what you're backing since you don't say. Giving coal all kinds of allowances turns out to lead to a 60% drop in coal use in two decades according to the EIA analysis!]
Even those of us who work on climate change need to have a vacation once in a while!
Enjoy.
Joe,
I hope the vacation is nice. However, I hope that in your quest for brevity, you don’t lose some of the lengthy discussion of nuanced points. Your blog is one of the few places that go through entire arguments. It is something that is missing in the blogosphere. You, Brad Delong & Glenn Greenwald all go through the difficult process of laying out the entire argument and discussing it. I think it is immensely important.
Enjoy your next month!
Joe,
I’m planning to attend your event with NRCM this evening in Portland. Here’s something I hope you’ll address:
Everyone seems to think that generating more renewable energy will reduce emissions, and that cap and trade will make RE more competitive. The latter is probably true, but as to reducing emissions, when a cap is set, that’s a fixed amount of allowances in circulation–an amount that won’t change unless RE actually retires allowances. The addition of RE will only reduce the cost of allowances because fewer will be needed. This may not be a problem for RPS policies because they’re mandated to happen anyway regardless of whether they reduce emissions (although many state legislatures expected to reduce emissions by the adoption of RPS policies). But the lack of emission reductions is a problem for voluntary markets for RE, which are largely motivated by a desire by corporations and organizations to reduce carbon emissions. Adopt a cap, and their voluntary purchases will no longer reduce emissions.
Contrary to conventional wisdom, the voluntary market for RE is significant. According to NREL, for the last several years voluntary demand for new renewables has exceed mandatory demand for new renewables, and a more recent NREL projection of the two markets shows voluntary demand at about one-third of total demand for renewable energy in 2015 (see http://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy09osti/45041.pdf, p. 23). RGGI solved this problem by allocating a small percentage of allowances to a Voluntary Renewable Energy Set-Aside, to be retired on behalf of documented voluntary purchases. Shouldn’t this be included in the Congressional bills as well?