Challenging Hegseth’s National Security Gambit
Hegseth may not have as much power as he thinks to run roughshod over the Endangered Species Act.
In my Monday post, I raised the possibility that the Administration would invoke national security to allow oil companies to push whales, sea turtles, and other species in the Gulf of Mexico toward extinction. That would involve using an obscure provision of the Endangered Species Act (ESA), that’s never been used before. I really hoped I was wrong, but you can usually count on the Trump Administration to pick the most environmentally destructive option. That's wha...
CONTINUE READINGPolicy Implications of Accelerating Warming
If warming is coming more quickly, we need to pick up the pace on policy responses.
There seems to be an emerging scientific consensus that the rate of global warming is rising. After screening out the effects of natural factors like El Niño, scientists have concluded that the pace of warming has roughly doubled since the 1970s. What does this tell us about policy? Some of the implications are more obvious than others, and at least one implication may be unsettling for some climate advocates. We’re unlikely to obtain complete success with any o...
CONTINUE READINGThe Environment is a System, Not an Array.
In 1969, Barry Commoner summed up much of environmental science in six words. Today’s conservatives don’t get it.
People have an intuitive tendency to focus on an action’s immediate direct effects. The same intuition leads us to downplay effects that are indirect, long-range, and cumulative. This can lead us astray, as it has the Supreme Court, when dealing with impacts on environmental systems. Writing at the outset of the modern environmental world, biologist Barry Commoner tried to crystalize what was known about the environment into four crisply phrased laws. The first law...
CONTINUE READINGHonoring Dolores Huerta
Huerta has received the Eleanor Roosevelt Human Rights Award, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and four honorary degrees--so why is her name rarely mentioned without Chávez’s?
Content Warning: Sexual Assault. Over the next week, as we draw nearer to California’s first “Farmworkers Day,” we’re undoubtedly going to see Dolores Huerta’s name in the news a lot. But unfortunately, I fear that the focus will be more about the recent New York Times investigation revealing that César Chávez sexually abused numerous women and girls—including Huerta, Ana Murguia, and Debra Rojas—for years during the height of the Far...
CONTINUE READINGHarming Species
The impact of repealing the ESA Section 9 prohibition on habitat destruction will be large for many endangered species.
As I posted last year, the Trump Administration is proposing to repeal an Endangered Species Act (ESA) regulation that limits destruction of habitat for listed species. Specifically, the proposal is to repeal the definition of “harm” in the regulations. That regulatory definition includes some forms of habitat destruction within the meaning of harm. And “harm” is in turn included in the statute within the definition of “take” which is prohibited under S...
CONTINUE READINGA State Density Bonus Loophole?
State density bonus law may allow a large mismatch between affordable housing provided and the additional density a proponent gets.
This is the second in two blog posts about state density bonus law and its potentially unintended consequences. The first post is here. As I noted in my prior post, the basic concept of state density bonus law is that if a project proponent includes a certain amount of affordable housing in their project, they get an increase in how big their project can be. If the project proponent includes a minimum percentage of units to serve a variety of possible housing cons...
CONTINUE READINGWe are Hitting a Major Methane Milestone
The Drain is a weekly roundup of environmental and climate news from Legal Planet.
This year, we celebrate 250 years since its discovery. No, I don’t mean America (though plans are underway to celebrate the semiquincentennial this July.) I’m talking about methane — that colorless, odorless, flammable and short-lived but super potent greenhouse gas that is helping heat the planet faster than carbon dioxide. It was 250 years ago that an Italian physicist named Alessandro Volta first discovered methane while observing bubbles at Lago Maggiore in...
CONTINUE READINGWhy do Governments Around the World Use Supply-Side Regulations to Boost Clean Transport?
New CLEE report explores the benefits these policies provide to transition off fossil fuel dependency
While the U.S. may be backsliding on requiring more fuel efficient and zero-emission vehicles, the story globally is largely the opposite. Governments around the world are still seeking to improve air quality and meet greenhouse gas goals and are increasingly moving towards supply-side regulations for their vehicle fleets. These policies include fuel economy standards, emission standards, and zero-emission vehicle sales requirements, typically paired with credit and/or c...
CONTINUE READINGThe Complexity of California Housing Law
Byzantine statutory provisions in state housing law may produce unintended consequences
One of the most important state laws to advance housing production in California is the state density bonus law. At heart, that law extends an offer to developers seeking to build a housing project. If you add some affordable housing to your project, the state will let you build higher than local zoning might otherwise allow you to do, and the state will also preempt local regulations that block your project (and also preempt a limited number of local regulations tha...
CONTINUE READINGThe “God Squad” is Subject to a Lot of Limits. But I’m still worried.
Getting an exemption from the Endangered Species Act is normally difficult. But there's a scary exception.
It's understandable that many people freaked out when a Federal Register notice appeared announcing a meeting of the Endangered Species Committee relating to offshore drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. (Actually, the notice said "Gulf of America," but I don't think anyone beyond Trump & Co. uses that term.) The Committee is nicknamed the God Squad, on the theory that it holds the power of life and death over endangered species. By exempting a project from the strict...
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