The Polluter-Pays Principle and Its Enemies
An essay by Alejandro Camacho and Robert L. Glicksman on corporate fraud, weaponizing preemption, and the survival of climate accountability.
This post by Alejandro Camacho and Robert L. Glicksman is an excerpt from an article first published in the University of Chicago Law Review. On the morning of December 30, 2021, the Marshall Fire ignited in Boulder County, Colorado. Driven by hurricane-force winds and fueled by vegetation desiccated by years of drought, it burned more than six thousand acres and destroyed over one thousand homes in a matter of hours — the most destructive wildfire in Colorado...
CONTINUE READINGThe EPA Power Plant Rule Repeal Don’t Make No Sense
The Drain is a roundup of environmental and climate news from Legal Planet.
The hair-on-fire news this week was the Environmental Protection Agency announcing that it is repealing rules that limit planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions from power plants fueled by coal and fossil gas. I saw the headline (“EPA Poised to Repeal Carbon Rules for Coal, Gas Power Plants") on Sunday evening, when Zahra Hirji, Jen Dlouhy, and Ari Natter broke the news for Bloomberg. The EPA made the announcement the next day. On its face, the move feels lik...
CONTINUE READINGThe Bottleneck in Forest Monitoring Isn’t in Orbit
Groups on the frontlines fighting deforestation are held back by institutional constraints - not just technological barriers - according to a new study from UCLA, NYU, World Resources Institute, and the Governors’ Climate and Forests Task Force.
There are 16,000 satellites circling the Earth right now, and a growing share of them capture images of our planet in unprecedented detail at every moment of the day. One of the many things they measure, monitor, and observe are forests. Being able to measure forests is the foundation for protecting them and for decades there have been efforts to get satellite data and remote sensing tools into the hands of the people who actually govern those forests. Underlying the...
CONTINUE READINGA summary of BACA
An overview of my analyses of Proposition 45
I’ve written a lot on the Cal Chamber sponsored initiative to dramatically change CEQA, BACA, which is Proposition 45 on this year’s ballot. Here are some key takeaways from what I’ve written, as well as links to the relevant blog posts. First, BACA will not just apply to CEQA. It broadly expands vested rights and imposes strict time limits for all permitting in the state for covered projects. It’s possible that it prevents ever increasing or changing re...
CONTINUE READINGThe Rise and Fall of an Energy Emergency
Frantic federal efforts to keep uneconomical coal plants from closing met their doom in a new court decision.
“Trump digs coal” was one of his 2016 slogans. Despite the photos of him with a miner’s hat, it’s hard to imagine the fastidious real estate developer even agreeing to touch a lump of coal, let alone handle a shovel deep underground. But his passion for the coal industry seems real, resulting in a series of emergency orders to keep coal-fired power plants from closing. This last-ditch effort met its Waterloo in a new D.C. Circuit decision declaring the orders...
CONTINUE READINGThe end of endangered species habitat protections in California?
Not quite, but the combination of the Trump Admin and Prop 45 will drastically reduce protections.
California likes to portray itself as an environmental leader, and in many ways it is. But in the context of one of the most important areas of environmental law – protecting endangered species – California is on the verge of eliminating most of its protections for the habitat of endangered species. That is the result of the double-punch of retrenchment by the Trump Administration on the federal Endangered Species Act (ESA), and the impacts of the likely passage ...
CONTINUE READINGA Warning to Local Planners in California
If Proposition 45 is passed, you may get blindsided by projects you cannot stop. You may want to prepare yourself.
A lot of the debates over BACA, the Cal Chamber supported initiative to fundamentally change CEQA (Proposition 45 on the ballot) focus on the initiative’s impacts on CEQA. But from a local government and planning perspective, I would argue that far more important are the sweeping vested rights provisions in the initiative. As I noted in prior analyses, the vested rights provisions in the initiative apply to all state and local laws in California, not just CEQA. O...
CONTINUE READINGTwo Wins from this Legislative Session — Awaiting Newsom
As Gov. Gavin Newsom’s term ends, these two bills present an opportunity to promote ratepayer affordability.
It’s September, and that means another legislative session has come to an end here in California. With it came some welcome news for those of us who have been following California’s efforts to avoid wasteful spending on new natural gas infrastructure. Two important bills, AB 2313 (Berman) and SB 1359 (Stern), both passed the legislature this session, and now await the governor’s signature. We covered AB 2313 before on this blog, and even released an en...
CONTINUE READINGCalifornia — The Resilient State. Really.
In the midst of a historic heat wave, the state's power grid has so far passed with flying colors
Remember rolling blackouts in California? At least at this point, they appear to be a thing of the past. Earlier today, I noticed a tweet from Cody Hill, who refers to himself as a "batteries and clean energy infrastructure developer," pointing to a rather stunning development. Despite a massive heat wave that has put more stress on California's power grid (downtown Los Angeles set a record 105 degrees yesterday), there have no reliability problems and no price spikes...
CONTINUE READINGMore on BACA and data centers
Considering the arguments in a recent op-ed arguing Prop 45 does not cover data centers
A key issue in the debate over the Cal Chamber of Commerce CEQA initiative (BACA, or Proposition 45 on the ballot) is whether it includes data centers as the types of projects that are eligible for the CEQA exemptions and vested rights provisions in the initiative. I’ve written about why they may well fall within the scope of BACA. There’s an op-ed to the contrary (available here). It’s well written, and if Proposition 45 passes, I expect this to be the argu...
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