Greg Pierce

Food security requires climate action.

Join us 12/12 @ 12pm! I can't think of a better bunch to be in conversation with on a controversial topic that is impacting all corners of our diverse state.

@ucanr.edu
@luskininnovation.bsky.social

All hotels on Grand Canyon National Park's South Rim to close indefinitely The closures come on the heels of the devastating Dragon Bravo Fire on the park's North Rim, which destroyed the historic Grand Canyon Lodge, the visitor center, a wastewater treatment plant and more ...

South Rim hotels at the Grand Canyon are closing indefinitely due to water supply issues post-Dragon Bravo Fire. There is a series of significant breaks in the main waterline, and currently, no water is being pumped to the South Rim. www.wmur.com/article/gran...

"Captain Gains" on Capitol Hill Shang-Jin Wei & Yifan Zhou WORKING PAPER 34524 DOI 10.3386/w34524 ISSUE DATE November 2025 Using transaction-level data on US congressional stock trades, we find that lawmakers who later ascend to leadership positions perform similarly to matched peers beforehand but outperform them by 47 percentage points annually after ascension. Leaders' superior performance arises through two mechanisms. The political influence channel is reflected in higher returns when their party controls the chamber, sales of stocks preceding regulatory actions, and purchase of stocks whose firms receiving more government contracts and favorable party support on bills. The corporate access channel is reflected in stock trades that predict subsequent corporate news and greater returns on donor-owned or home-state firms.

令 1 1 -9 -8 -7 -6 -5 -4 -3 -2 -1 1 2 3 4 5 7 8 9 Year Figure 2: Estimated dynamic quasi-difference-in-differences coefficient, di, of equation(3), with vertical dashed lines representing 90 percent confidence intervals. The point estimate of the year in which the lawmaker became a congressional leader (Year 0) is normalized to zero. BHAR over the 250 days following each trade is the dependent variable and calculated using the Fama-French five-factor plus momentum as the benchmark model.

After becoming a congressional leader, a politician’s stock portfolio beats out those of peers by 47 (!!!) percentage points a year through trades timed around bills and firms that later get government contracts

www.nber.org/papers/w34524

via @florianederer.bsky.social

The best back of book sleeve quote I have seen

LA Wildfire Survivors Want to Rebuild All-Electric, but a Utility Is Using Customer Funds to Incentivize Gas Appliances - Inside Climate News California’s utility regulator said it would eliminate ratepayer-funded incentives for gas appliances in new construction, but created an exception that allows rebates for them in wildfire rebuilds.

"I find it infuriating that they’re allowing the continued use of efficiency funds for this. This jeopardizes public health, safety, and our climate goals." - @missionvespa.bsky.social
insideclimatenews.org/news/0312202...

Equitable Policy to Mitigate Plastic’s Health Risks | UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation UCLA research links plastic, oil, and gas pollution to health inequities in California and guides equitable policy for effective mitigation.

Also check out colleagues' recent work in this space:

innovation.luskin.ucla.edu/2025/11/06/c...

Um, what?

Big fan of this paper, which I reviewed for Nature Cities.

If you didn't think urban form and water access were related...

Love getting a journal acceptance notice which is framed as a publication fee-money grab

Nice win-win way to phase-out gas: the utility identifies pipelines due for replacement. If it is cheaper to electrify all the buildings served by that pipeline than digging, they pay for electrification. In Belgium, we're still extending the gas network 🙁

Fascinating article defining and mapping river drainage systems on Mars, where #water used to flow.
www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Official news release.

NREL is now NLOR (does not roll off the tongue).

www.nrel.gov/news/detail/...

This is figure 2, which shows temperature–mortality relationship across Europe.

A study in Nature Climate Change quantifies the potential for extreme heat events in Europe to generate mass mortality and projects tens of thousands of excess deaths. go.nature.com/483zJc3 🧪

Fears ratchet up over Mora County well contamination The bottled water at the Las Vegas Walmart is a better deal than the water in Mora. The superstore is 36 miles away from Helen and Julian Olivas’ home in

Fears of post-wildfire groundwater well contamination in New Mexico www.taosnews.com/news/environ...

Episode 80: The Imperial Valley—winter produce basket and living border — Water Talk A conversation with University of California Desert Research and Extension Center Director Dr. Jairo Diaz about water, agriculture, and border dynamics in the Imperial Valley of California. Re-release...

Looking for a good listen while traveling? Catch up with the Water Talk crew talking about the US/MEX borderlands where your winter produce is grown, and the people and water that make it happen! www.watertalkpodcast.com/episodes/epi...

California regulator recommends lowering utilities’ return on equity The California Public Utilities Commission could vote next month on utilities' profit structure for 2026.

While candidates *talk* about lowering electricity bills, unelected (appointed) commissioners in California may be on the verge of actually *doing* something about it. Other PUCs should consider trimming ROE as well, putting Main St. ahead of Wall St.
www.eenews.net/articles/cal...

Energy justice at the utility scale: Insights from Los Angeles's path to decarbonization Decarbonization of our energy systems is key to alleviating environmental injustices and enabling a more sustainable, livable planet for all. Yet, wit…

Important new work looking at @ladwp.com's LA100 Equity Strategies: "This case study highlights both the promise and the limitations of applied energy justice in the context of large-scale grid decarbonization."

👉 Read the case study: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Here's a graphical summary of our Water Systems-Wildfire article in Environmental Research Letters, which is in the Supplementary Material, but gets buried unless you know to look for it.

Thanks to @edithdeguzman.bsky.social for creating!

Full article: iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1...

Have to charge at least in part by differential cost of protection within the city when we’re talking about wildfire.

L.A. firefighters propose hike in sales tax to pay for new stations, equipment and more “This is the most important thing for the LAFD really ever,” said Doug Coates, acting president of the city firefighter union.

Very supportive of increased and designated funding for local fire departments. It is bizarre how we currently fund them and not conducive to success.

At the same time, a sales tax is a terrible and regressive way to do this.

www.latimes.com/california/s...

As the one year anniversary of the LA fires approaches, the wildfire and water supply/infrastructure beat continues with a new peer-reviewed, open source paper our team wrote. It's a solutions oriented look at what is both feasible and relatively affordable iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1...

Screenshot, job description: The “Ethical Technology Transitions to Mitigate Climate Change” program seeks one PhD student to be advised by Dr. Emily Grubert either in Notre Dame’s Civil and Environmental Engineering and Earth Sciences (CEEES) program (School of Engineering) or the Sustainable Development (SD) program (Keough School of Global Affairs). This position is fully funded for four years (anticipated stipend: $36,000/year) and will be supported by the resources associated with the Ethics and the Common Good program chair for three years, with remaining funding to come from other sources that might carry additional deliverable requirements (e.g., a secondary project) that will be clearly communicated to the candidate. The primary research area for this position will focus on ethical considerations related to technology deployment for reducing and removing greenhouse gas emissions from the atmosphere, with a particular focus either on modeling distributional effects of particular deployment patterns associated with net-zero greenhouse gas emissions pathways (CEEES PhD) or on designing governance systems for emerging technology systems, including Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR); hydrogen; renewable electricity; or end use electrification technologies (SD PhD). Teaching requirements are aligned with the requirements of the specific degree program. Funding is available for conference attendance, and students will have the opportunity to work with and/or mentor undergraduate research assistants.

🚨job alert🚨

I'm looking to hire at least one PhD student for next year, looking at decarbonization-oriented technology deployment within an ethical frame of resource allocation and justice outcomes.

Full ad attached! Pref for CEEES admissions; deadline is 1 January.

Good chat about emergency management in these strange times on the Water Talk podcast!

Surprise: no surprise!

Even a full reservoir wouldn't have ensured water in Palisades fire, California officials say During the Palisades fire, a nearby reservoir was empty for repairs. State officials say even if it had been full, the water system would have been quickly overwhelmed.

Timing is completely coincidental with and independent of but directly in line with the just released FSRI report on what happened in LA.

LA Times article also citing our FAQ

www.latimes.com/environment/...

Led by Erik Porse, another collab w me, @fkearns.bsky.social , @edithdeguzman.bsky.social and others not here. More broadly between @luskininnovation.bsky.social @ucanrwater.bsky.social

Our peer-reviewed, Open Access perspective is out in IOP Publishing's Environmental Research Letters:

"Adapting urban water supply infrastructure and policies for wildfire in the 21st century"

iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1...

I feel like evacuating a city of 14 million because they are going to run out of water should be a bigger story regardless of where it is.