Looking at a future of rising energy demands, dwindling traditional supplies and greater volatility in fuel pricing, a new report by economist David Roland-Holst finds that a new energy agenda in California would create both short and long term growth. The new agenda should emphasize efficiency, renewables, and infrastructure.
The report finds that “a dollar spent on traditional energy is a dollar earned by 10-100 times as many new workers.” New job creation would occur both directly with “green collar” jobs as well as up and downstream. Most of these jobs would also have in-state job retention since jobs in the services bedrock of the state’s labor force cannot be outsourced.
The report looks at five different forecasting scenarios, and in each one, employment creation outweighs employment reduction. The report finds that the faster California deploys renewable energy resources, the faster the economy will grow and create jobs. The most ambitious of the scenarios is forecast to produce the most new jobs and income (for example, it suggests that aiming for 50 percent renewable energy sources along with 1.5 percent annual increases in efficiency would generate half a million new jobs with over $100 billion in cumulative payrolls over 40 years).
"Climate change does not affect everyone equally in the United States," says Rahcel Morello-Frosch, Associate Professor of Environmental Science, Policy and Management, and of Public Health at UC Berkeley and lead author of a new report on climate change. The report, The Climate Gap looks at the unequal harm climate change will have in the United States on people of color and the poor. Droughts, heat waves, poor air quality, floods, higher prices for basic necessities, and other challenges of climate change will have a disproportional impact on people of color and the poor.
The report also explores ways in which efforts to solve climate change and to close the “climate gap” can be combined. The report suggests many changes that should be made in government polices, including that government agencies at all levels should increase public participation in regulatory decisions at all levels to help counter imbalances in political power. That greenhouse gas emission reductions should be focused on neighborhoods that have the dirtiest air and on pollutants that may jeopardize public health and that green jobs and worker transition could be targeted to people of color and the poor.
Congratulations to the 2009 Recipients of the CNR Awards.
Kass Green, Forestry '74, was honored with the CNR Citation. This is the College's highest award, honoring individuals, couples, groups or organizations such as donors, volunteers, alumni, advisory board members, or friends of the College who have made extraordinary contributions to the CNR community. Recipients are honored for their extraordinary commitment of time, sharing their expertise, advocacy and outreach, and/or private support to the College, its students, and its programs. The Citation recognizes those who have made a significant impact and have demonstrated an exceptional commitment the mission of the College.
The other 2009 CNR Award winners are:
Professor John Cassida
Career Achievement Award
Professor Justin Brashares
Young Faculty/CE Specialist Award
Uncovering the complex relationship between the forest and the atmosphere
This month, Nature profiles atmospheric chemist Allen Goldstein, (link - Nature subscription required | PDF - open access) who specializes in interpreting the scents of the forest. Goldstein has built his career on finding and characterizing some of the more elusive airborne chemicals in nature. For 10 years at the Blodgett Forest Research Station his team has described more than a dozen plant-released compounds that no one had previously measured or, in some cases, even known existed in the atmosphere.
Goldstein also made a bit of a stir recently when his team found that the southeastern U.S. seems to be getting cooler while the rest of the globe is warming. The researchers used satellite and ground sensor data to track air pollution, and found that cooling induced by atmospheric haze has outpaced the warming due to rising carbon dioxide levels in that region.
Over the past decade, scientists have been battling an epidemic that has killed more than one million oak trees in the state. If it remains unchecked, the disease could change the face of California's landscape. The good news is that researchers have found a way to inoculate individual trees against it. But time is running out before Sudden Oak Death decimates California's forests.
Sierra Pacific Foundation helps make Zivnuska building a reality
The Sierra Pacific Foundation has generously donated $10,000 toward the completion of John A. Zivnuska Computer Laboratory at CNR's forestry camp in the Plumas National Forest. The 1,400 square foot cedar structure, built with open-beam log house construction, provides students in the field with access to computers, geographic information systems, and other technologies.
According to the San Francisco Chronicle, Talley Vineyards, a family-run winemaker where growing is overseen by CNR alum Brian Talley (Political Economy of Natural Resources '88), seems to have captured the essence of wine country and brought it to San Luis Obispo County.
MM_XSLTransform error. http://nature.berkeley.edu/blogs/newsline/index.xml is not a valid XML document. DOMDocument::loadXML() [domdocument.loadxml]: Opening and ending tag mismatch: link line 8 and head in Entity, line: 9 DOMDocument::loadXML() [domdocument.loadxml]: Opening and ending tag mismatch: head line 5 and html in Entity, line: 40 DOMDocument::loadXML() [domdocument.loadxml]: Premature end of data in tag html line 4 in Entity, line: 42 in file http://nature.berkeley.edu/blogs/newsline/index.xml.
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en" xml:lang="en">
<head>
<title>Object not found!</title>
<link rev="made" href="mailto:webmaster@dummy-host.nature.berkeley.edu" />
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="includes/styles/cnr_new.css" title="default">
</head>
<body>
<h1>Object not found!</h1>
<p>
The requested URL was not found on this server.
If you entered the URL manually please check your
spelling and try again.
</p>
<p>
If you think this is a server error, please contact
the <a href="mailto:webmaster@dummy-host.nature.berkeley.edu">webmaster</a>.
</p>
<h2>Error 404</h2>
<address>
<a href="/">nature.berkeley.edu</a><br />
<span>Sat Jul 04 06:39:03 2009<br />
Apache/2.2.11 (Unix) mod_fastcgi/2.4.6 mod_ssl/2.2.11 OpenSSL/0.9.8k DAV/2 PHP/5.2.9 mod_perl/2.0.3 Perl/v5.8.8</span>
</address>
</body>
</html>
MM_XSLTransform error. http://rss.furl.net/members/cnrberkeley/rss.xml is not a valid XML document. DOMDocument::loadXML() [domdocument.loadxml]: Opening and ending tag mismatch: HTML line 1 and html in Entity, line: 8 in file http://rss.furl.net/members/cnrberkeley/rss.xml.
<HTML><HEAD><TITLE>Error 400</TITLE></HEAD>
<body bgcolor="#ffffff">
<h3>
Error 400 - Bad Request
</h3>
<!-- 400 error -->
</body>
</html>
<!-- text below generated by server. PLEASE REMOVE -->
Looking at a future of rising energy demands, dwindling traditional supplies and greater volatility in fuel pricing, a new report by economist David Roland-Holst finds that a new energy agenda in California would create both short and long term growth. The new agenda should emphasize efficiency, renewables, and infrastructure.
The article expands upon themes 
