Reforming CEQA Part 3
Adding more binding clear standards for CEQA plus focusing alternatives analysis
This is the third in a series of blog posts on reforming the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). The first post, discussing different paradigms for CEQA, is here. The second post, discussing the conceptual framework for reform, is here. In this post, I will discuss two ways to reform CEQA: designating a state agency to set binding, clear standards for CEQA implementation; and setting stricter limits on alternatives analysis. Create binding, clear standa...
CONTINUE READINGTrump and Xi Meet in Beijing
As the U.S. and China meet, climate change is NOT on the agenda.
When Presidents Trump and Xi meet this week in Beijing, climate and environment will not be on the agenda. That absence is striking, because the U.S. and China are now moving in radically different directions on climate, energy, and environmental protection. The US is in an extraordinarily anti-environmental moment. It has exited both the Paris Agreement and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. The Trump EPA now talks mostly about “deregulation” and has ...
CONTINUE READINGAn Inconvenient Truth Two Decades Later
Global X via flickr
The Drain is a weekly roundup of environmental and climate news from Legal Planet.
Twenty years ago this month, I walked out of a movie theater, dumfounded, after seeing “An Inconvenient Truth,” the Al Gore documentary that would go on to frame the conversation around climate change for years. I remember feeling riveted and freaked-out. I’d read enough Adbusters in college to have a decent critique of capitalism, but Gore’s sense of moral outrage at the fossil fuel industry — and Republican strategists — for deceiving the public...
CONTINUE READINGReforming CEQA, part 2
Concepts for reforming CEQA as a backstop environmental law
This is the second in a series of six blog posts on reforming the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). The first post, discussing different paradigms for CEQA, is here. What reforms might be needed in orienting CEQA around a paradigm as a backstop environmental law? The criticism of environmental review that I believe has the most purchase is that it can be used, strategically, to force delays on projects, with the goal of causing them to be withdrawn or f...
CONTINUE READINGReforming CEQA Part 1
Thinking about CEQA as a backstop statute
The qualification for the November ballot of the California Chamber of Commerce ballot initiative rewriting CEQA does create an opportunity, if the legislature is so inclined, to strike a deal with the proponents and do an overhaul of CEQA. As I noted in the last of my series of blog posts on the initiative, there are real issues with CEQA and its implementation – but the ballot initiative is an imperfect tool to address those issues. In this series of blog posts, ...
CONTINUE READINGScrap Yards, Scrapped Enforcement?
The City of Los Angeles’s regulatory tools exist to protect communities from metal recycling hazards—but they're rarely invoked.
This post was co-written by UCLA Law student Kate Inman (J.D., 2026). Throughout California’s Senate District 20, roughly thirty scrap metal recycling facilities sit in the industrial corridors running alongside residential housing. For the working-class, majority-Latino communities living blocks away, the legal system has been slow to respond. Drive through Sun Valley or Pacoima on a weekday morning and you will smell it before you see it: the metallic...
CONTINUE READINGThe Other Half of Climate: Policy, Capital, and the Race to Scale Superpollutant Solutions
Learn how California is using satellite data to pull the emergency brake on global warming.
Methane and other short-lived climate pollutants (SLCPs) are responsible for nearly half of today’s net global warming. Because they exit the atmosphere quickly, reducing them can serve as an ‘emergency brake’ on rising temperatures. At the San Francisco Climate Week, UC Berkeley’s Center for Law, Energy and the Environment (CLEE) and the Institute for Governance & Sustainable Development (IGSD) brought together 80+ policymakers, scientists, technologists, an...
CONTINUE READINGTrump’s FEMA Review
Trump’s FEMA Council has reported back. Its basic strategy is flawed.
After much delay, Trump’s FEMA Council has reported back. While the report has some good ideas, much of it revolves around the same strategy: Move current problems from the federal government to the states rather than fixing them. Moving responsibilities around doesn’t make them go away. And the reality is that many states will be unable to manage these tasks efficiently. They lack the federal government’s capacity and economies of scale. And while the fe...
CONTINUE READINGIs BACA Constitutional?
Limitations on judicial review in the initiative might violate separation of powers
The California Chamber of Commerce initiative to rewrite the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) has strict limits on judicial review for challenges to agency decisions for projects covered by the initiative. Courts may only hear claims “limited to a public agency's non-compliance with objective existing laws, and the scope of the court's review shall be limited to whether the approval or authorization complies objective existing laws” [sic]. Proposed new...
CONTINUE READINGThe 2026 Election and the Environment
Trump will still be able to take a lot of anti-environmental actions. But not as many as today.
I published a post a week ago about prospects for the upcoming 2026 elections. I didn’t say much, however, about why the results will matter for the environment. No matter what happens electorally, Trump will still be in the White House and able to use executive powers to favor fossil fuels and bulldoze environmental protections. Nevertheless, the elections could still make a real difference in environmental terms. Even just taking the House would matter, but the...
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