Month: December 2009
Climate Change and International Human Rights Law
A report released today by the International Human Rights Law Clinic and the Miller Institute for Global Challenges and the Law at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law and the Center for Law & Global Justice at the University of San Francisco School of Law finds that climate change policies may unintentionally increase …
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CONTINUE READINGClimate adaptation developments
With hopes for rapid global or domestic reductions in greenhouse gas emissions fading, the importance of adaptation becomes ever more apparent. Those responsible for protecting public health, maintaining infrastructure, and managing water and wildlife understand that they are facing enormous challenges. Policymakers, resource managers, stakeholders, and the scientific community are all beginning to respond. Here …
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CONTINUE READINGTwo Stories from Eastern Europe
Arthur Max from AP has an excellent piece on the environment in Eastern Europe, contrasting two rivers. The Danube flows through Germany and then Hungary, Slovakia, Croatia, Romania, and Bulgaria. It was an environmental disaster, but both the river itself and its environs have been improved greatly for three reasons: (a) the countries involved have …
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CONTINUE READINGSome Reflections and Predictions Based on Yesterday’s Supreme Court Arguments in the Stop the Beach Renourishment Case
As reported earlier this week on this site, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments yesterday in an important property rights/environmental case, Stop the Beach Renourishment v. Florida Dept. of Environmental Protection. Here are some observations and (perhaps intemperate) predictions based on those arguments, which I was able to attend at the Supreme Court yesterday: …
CONTINUE READINGRenewable energy white paper released by Berkeley/UCLA Law & California Attorney General’s Office
As part of an ongoing series of white papers on business and climate change, UC Berkeley and UCLA Schools of Law, together with the California Attorney General’s Office, is pleased to release our second white paper, on the topic of increasing renewable energy production from large public and commercial buildings, highway land, aqueducts, and other …
CONTINUE READINGProperty Rights, Coastal Protection and the Roberts Court
Today the U.S. Supreme Court hears oral arguments in the most consequential environmental case of the current Term: Stop the Beach Renourishment v. Florida Department of Environmental Protection, No. 08-1151. This case bears close watching, for several reasons. First, the litigation represents the Roberts Court’s first foray into the longstanding legal and policy debate pitting …
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CONTINUE READINGNPDES permits on impaired waterways
Cross-posted at CPRBlog. Precisely what the Clean Water Act requires of point sources that discharge to already-polluted waterways has long been a point of confusion. Now, according to Inside EPA (subscription required) EPA may revise the rules it applies to new permits on impaired waterways. A rulemaking seems far from certain at this point — …
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CONTINUE READINGAn Unhappy Update on Climate Science
The Copenhagen Diagnosis updates the last IPCC report. Most of the news isn’t encouraging: Global ice-sheets are melting at an increased rate; Arctic sea-ice is disappearing much faster than recently projected, and future sea-level rise is now expected to be much higher than previously forecast, according to a new global scientific synthesis prepared by some …
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