Month: June 2010

10 Wasted Years of Subway Service to the San Fernando Valley

The Source, the Los Angeles Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s in-house blog, proudly links to an article on the ten-year anniversary of the opening of Red Line subway service to the San Fernando Valley from Hollywood. Blogger Fred Camino notes that ridership on the route is well below initial projections (153,000 daily boardings compared to a hoped …

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News Flash: Richard Lazarus to be Executive Director of Deepwater Horizon Team

DOE has announced: The co-chairs of the bipartisan National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling have selected a highly regarded Georgetown University law professor to serve as the commission’s executive director. Richard Lazarus, the Justice William J. Brennan, Jr., Professor of Law at Georgetown, will lead the staff of the …

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Not Working on the Railroad

Thies, where I was staying on my American Jewish World Service delegation trip to Senegal, is about 36 miles from the Senegalese capital, Dakar.  That might not seem like a lot, but with typical Global South infrastructure, it is: often it can take more than 2 hours to get from one place to another.  Plodding …

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Economy v. Environment Directly at Issue in Lifting of Drilling Ban

As oil continues to gush into the gulf — more bad news on that front today — a federal judge with financial ties to the oil drilling industry has issued an injunction lifting the federal government’s moratorium on deepwater drilling in the Gulf.  The legal intricacies of the lifting of the ban, while interesting to …

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“Africa Is Dying”

This was the sobering message I received last week as part of a delegation to Senegal from the American Jewish World Service. Senegal is in the Sahel, a 1,000 kilometer-wide African region between the Sahara on the north and the sub-tropics to the south.  It is relatively well-watered, but is nevertheless a poster child for …

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As the Gulf Bleeds Crude Oil, Alberta’s Tar Sands Provide a Test

If you were President Obama, what would you do about the tar sands fields in Alberta?  He is being asked to approve or reject a pipeline extension that would carry 900,000 barrels per day of Canadian crude deep into the United States.  It has to be exceedingly tempting to just say “yes”.  After all, Canada …

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U.S. Supreme Court Issues Decision in Monsanto case

The U.S. Supreme Court handed down its decision today in Monsanto v. Geertson Seed Farms,   a case involving Monsanto’s efforts to introduce Roundup Ready Alfalfa, a genetically modified crop engineered to tolerate the herbicide Roundup.   The Court, on a 7-1 vote (Stevens dissenting, Bryer recused), held in favor of Monsanto but did so in a way …

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Cara Won’t Be Blogging for a While, With Good Reason

I am happy to report that Cara Horowitz, the Executive Director of the Emmett Center on Climate Change and the Environment at UCLA Law, and her husband Stefan Grunspan are the proud parents of Molly Claire Grunspan.  Molly joined the world on June 10. So if you miss Cara’s blogging for the next several months …

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Jerry Brown and the Environment

Unlike Meg Whitman’s website, Brown’s website features the environment front and center, with long lists of his environmental accomplishments as California Attorney General and in his time as Governor.   I was particularly  interested in what he said about his accomplishments as mayor of Oakland, which (according to the website) included: • Reducing Greenhouse Gases: Under …

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Fumigants Take Center Stage in California

I wrote previously about the strange story of methyl iodide, a chemical purposely used by researchers to cause cancer in labs, being proposed for use as a fumigant for strawberry production in California.  The New York Times recently covered a  legislative hearing by the California Senate Food and Agriculture Committee in which the members of an external scientific review panel lambasted California …

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