Whither the Governor’s Mansion?
Some big environmental battles are brewing in Sacramento. But where will the next Governor stand?
Those of you who tuned in to the extra-long season finale of my favorite reality TV show, the California State Legislature, on September 1 (a full half-day after session was supposed to end, mind you: Drama!) may have, as I did, audibly gasped at the moment when the Assembly simply declined to vote on a compromise wildfire bill proposal (after a deal had reportedly been struck in the wee hours of the weekend: Drama!). The last-minute maneuver punted a critical conver...
CONTINUE READINGUCLA Law Clinics File Brief in the “Mecheros” Case
UCLA’s Human Rights Litigation Clinic and Environmental Law Clinic represent experts in a long-running case that seeks to stop harmful gas flaring in Ecuador.
Guest Contributors Incia Haider and Enrique Garcia are J.D. candidates of UCLA School of Law, ‘27. This month, the Human Rights Litigation Clinic and the Frank G. Wells Environmental Law Clinic at UCLA School of Law filed an amicus brief with the Constitutional Court of Ecuador on behalf of a group of law professors and international legal scholars: our own Kate Mackintosh of UCLA Law, Sarah Dorman at Northwestern, Camilo Sanchez at the University of...
CONTINUE READINGMontana’s Human Experiment with Untested Drugs
The state has decided to allow experimental drugs to be used on anyone who can pay for them.
Montana has adopted a bold new law (according to advocates) or a reckless one (according to critics). The new law allows experimental drugs and medical devices to be used on anyone--or at least anyone with enough cash--once treatments have passed very basic safety testing. Whether the treatments work is apparently not something Montanans care about it. The moving force behind the legislation was provided by tech bros interested in longevity treatments. To qualify, a...
CONTINUE READINGThe Overlooked Fast Track for Cutting Planetary Warming
Guest contributors V. Ram Ramanathan, Durwood Zaelke, and Marcelo Suárez-Orozco write that we can cut the rate of warming by 30% to 50% within 15 years. “And we must.”
This guest post is authored by V. Ram Ramanathan, Durwood Zaelke, and Marcelo Suárez-Orozco and is informed by a presentation that Ramanathan is set to give at the Vatican on September 26. Among the three of us, we have 15 decades of high-level experience in climate science, policies and actions, and we have never been more alarmed than we are at this moment. The United Nations has just officially declared that the world has failed in limiting global warming to ...
CONTINUE READINGYa Gotta Read The Syllabus!!
A new study reveals the pervasiveness of academic groupthink -- with warnings for environmental scholars
https://youtube.com/shorts/aL_fP5axQV4?si=TiZ2fdjCBepTwWPR One of the most frustrating aspects about the debate over the degree to which “Wokeness” (never defined) has taken over the Academy (or not) is that it relies almost exclusively on anecdotes. Someone says or writes something ridiculous; someone else is fired for saying or writing something ridiculous (or often not ridiculous). It is very hard to get a good general picture of things. Recently, Jon A. Shi...
CONTINUE READINGWhat Explains Trump’s Energy Policy?
There’s no plausible economic explanation. It’s all about politics.
Trump’s energy policy rests on promotion of U.S. fossil fuel production and use. The instruments include orders forcing coal-fired generators to keep operating, relaxed air pollution standards for power plants, and repeal of as many energy efficiency standards as possible. Not to mention trying to block renewable energy project wherever and however he can. Trump’s overall economic policy centers on mercantilism, the belief that countries get rich by exporting more t...
CONTINUE READINGThe 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...
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