Climate Issues in the 2026 Governor’s Race: Energy Transition
Seventh in a series of posts outlining key challenges and opportunities facing California’s next governor
California is pursuing some of the world’s most ambitious clean energy goals, including a legally mandated zero-emissions electricity sector and statewide GHG emissions neutrality by 2045. When it comes to the energy transition, the stakes for the incoming governor are high: a massive surge in electricity demand from electric vehicles, building electrification, and data centers could increase grid costs and strain reliability; winding down oil production and refining w...
CONTINUE READINGThe Future of the Colorado
There's not enough water to go around, but there's no agreement about what to do.
The Colorado River provides water to 40 million people and about 5.5 million acres of irrigated farmland. There's only so much water to go around, so how to divide up the water has been hotly disputed for over a century. The previous agreement has come unstuck, but finding a replacement has proved devilishly difficult. A century ago, we thought we had the answer.. The 1922 Colorado River Compact was negotiated under the aegis of Herbert Hoover, who was then a cabine...
CONTINUE READING$75k and a Dead Bird
The origins of California's inverse condemnation doctrine and how it increases electricity rates.
Last week, the California Earthquake Authority (“CEA”) released a major new report titled Enhancing California’s Resiliency to Natural Catastrophes (the “Report”). The legislatively-mandated report, which I wrote about earlier, provides recommendations to address the unsustainable financial losses faced by electric utilities, insurance companies, and the public, as climate change-driven wildfires cause catastrophic damage across the state. It offers a compr...
CONTINUE READINGHow, Exactly, Has Trump Gone After EVs?
A close look at the Administration’s wreckage, in six steps
The second Trump Administration has brought a flood of obstacles to the national effort to transition away from petroleum-powered vehicles to electric vehicles (EVs). These challenges have come in many forms across multiple levels of government; they are in most cases completely unprecedented, and in many cases legally dubious (to put it mildly). The push to electrify in the US was on precarious but improving footing before Trump took office. The recent legislative,...
CONTINUE READINGHarmful Activities, the Duty to Rescue, and Climate Change
A concept from tort law suggests another argument for international climate adaptation funding.
Climate change will require massive investments in higher sea walls, stronger levees, stronger disaster responses, and other adaptation measures. Poorer countries can’t shoulder those expenses. Do countries that caused past carbon emissions have a duty to help pay for adaptation and disaster response? Much of the argument about this is phrased in terms of compensation for past emissions not unlike arguments that oil companies should pay damages for oil spills. Tort...
CONTINUE READINGBlow Your Mind on Space Pics to Save the World
NASA
The Drain is a weekly roundup of environmental and climate news from Legal Planet.
Hope, optimism, humility and awe have been in short supply. This week, I felt all of these things not once but twice — first while sitting in the dark at the movies and again while watching the NASA livestream of Artemis II’s lunar flyby. There is nothing like space exploration to change your frame of reference. First, the Hollywood version: I was pleasantly surprised by “Project Hail Mary,” the Ryan Gosling sci-fi blockbuster based on the Andy Weir book o...
CONTINUE READINGClimate Issues in the 2026 Governor’s Race: Wildfire
Creator: Javier Alonso Huerta
Sixth in a series of posts outlining key challenges and opportunities facing California’s next governor.
Eighteen of California’s 20 most destructive wildfires have occurred in the past 25 years, driven by decades of fire suppression, climate change, and continued development in the wildland-urban interface (WUI). The 2025 Los Angeles fires alone took at least 31 lives and caused property and capital losses ranging from $95 billion to $164 billion. The next governor will confront a rapidly evolving wildfire crisis with cascading implications for utility regulation, in...
CONTINUE READINGCalifornia Has a Neighborhood Decarbonization Law. How Does It Work?
New FAQ from UCLA outlines what we know (and don’t know) about the implementation of SB 1221, California’s landmark neighborhood decarbonization law.
By Sooji Yang, Lauren Dunlap, Elias van Emmerick, and Gregory Pierce The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) is currently navigating a wide array of questions from stakeholders as it designs a first-of-its-kind program to transition entire blocks of buildings from natural gas to zero-emission alternatives. Guidelines for the pilot program—a central component of Senate Bill (SB) 1221—must be finalized by this July. But its mandate is unprecedented. Wh...
CONTINUE READING‘Smog and Sunshine’: Achieving Clean Air in California
UCLA's Ann Carlson discusses her new book and how the state can address federal efforts to undo its emissions standards.
Los Angeles is famous for both sunshine and smog. Turns out the two are related. Ozone pollution is caused by the interaction of sunlight and the chemicals that come out of vehicle tailpipes and factory smokestacks. But when Ann Carlson’s family first moved to Southern California, nobody knew what caused smog and there were no laws on the books to prevent it. “I lived through the smoggiest decades of Los Angeles in the 1960s, all the way into the 1990s, and I...
CONTINUE READINGThe Promise of Non-Pipeline Alternatives to Gas Lines
A new UCLA Law brief evaluates the Home Energy Choice Act (AB 2313) by California Assemblymember Marc Berman.
This post was co-written by Guest Contributor Maeve Anderson (J.D. Candidate 2026, UCLA School of Law). California’s transition away from natural gas is accelerating, with new policy tools emerging to speed the shift and ease the financial burden on ratepayers. In February 2026, California Assemblymember Marc Berman introduced the Home Energy Choice Act (AB 2313), a bill that would require utilities to offer customers a financial incentive to electrify their hom...
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