Trump’s Slump
The Trump regime is losing ground, creating new policy opportunities.
After its initial successes in attacking liberal institutions and policies, the Trump regime has now run into serious headwinds. The midterm elections are looking increasingly favorable for Democrats, who are now clearly favored to control the House and have a real chance of flipping the Senate. The Iran War seems likely to continue for weeks with little to show for the economic pain. The overhyped effort to bring back manufacturing jobs is a bust, despite tariffs an...
CONTINUE READINGCommunity Benefits Aren’t Impossible – They Just Take Work
A statewide strategy by the California Coastal Commission and a fisheries working group provides a model for community benefits on infrastructure and other projects
For California is to reach its climate goals, including a target of net zero GHG emissions by 2045, a variety of private- and public-sector approaches are necessary; among them is the construction and permitting of numerous clean energy infrastructure projects, such as offshore wind developments, which will play a key role in balancing the state’s clean energy portfolio by producing clean power at night and during the winter when solar output is low or zero. While r...
CONTINUE READINGBig Oil Could Pay for Climate-Fueled Insurance Hikes
The Drain is a weekly roundup of environmental and climate news from Legal Planet.
There are several ways to try to make polluters pay. California is considering a new one — empower the state Attorney General to sue oil and gas companies to recover costs on behalf of Californians specifically related to the housing insurance market. Survivors, taxpayers and policyholders — whose rates are skyrocketing as a result of climate-fueled disasters like last year’s Eaton and Palisades fires — are already paying. Fossil fuel companies should too....
CONTINUE READINGLessons for a Warming Planet: A Vital History of U.S. Environmental Law
UCLA’s Alejandro Camacho discusses his new book and the lessons we can learn from prior generations of environmental advocates.
This Earth Day, environmental advocates are looking backward as well as forward. With the U.S. federal government so dramatically overhauling environmental policy, history shows how American social movements of the 19th and 20th centuries overcame seemingly insurmountable odds to preserve public lands and pass laws protecting human health. “I’ve been trying to look through the history of the United States to understand how we’ve gotten where we are,” said Ale...
CONTINUE READINGClimate 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 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 comprehensive assessmen...
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...
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