Year: 2009

Water wars, eastern style

Those of us in the west have grown used to thinking of water wars as a regional specialty. But they happen in the east too. Florida, Alabama, and Georgia have been in court for nearly 20 years fighting over the waters of the Apalachicola-Chattahoochee-Flint River system, popularly known as the ACF. On Friday, a federal …

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Is India Going Green?

According to a story in today’s NY Times,  India is making a major push toward renewable energy: “We need to get our act together,” said Gauri Singh, joint secretary in India’s Ministry of New and Renewable Energy, which was set up 26 years ago, “because India is growing faster than anyone can imagine. Renewable energy …

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Four Years Later, and Still No Real Plan

A new report by the National Research Council gives “thumbs down” to the Army Corps’ plans for preventing another Katrina disaster. This is the kind of planning that we simply have to learn to do right– not just for the sake of those immediately at risk, but because rising sea level and more extreme weather …

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Cronkite on Climate

Some people are calling him “the last journalist” because his breed of even-handed, fact-based report seems to be an endangered species. Be that as it may, it’s interesting to note that he spoke out on the subject of climate change a few years ago in the pages of the Philadelphia Inquirer.  Not surprising, his perspective …

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Deputy Director Named for CEQ

The White House has announced that Gary S. Guzy, former general counsel and counselor to the administrator of EPA during the Clinton administration and previously a senior attorney in DOJ’s environmental division, will  be named deputy director of the Council on Environmental Quality. Guzy has also been a partner at  Foley Hoag, a consultant to …

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Waxman Markey, the Clean Air Act and State Climate Legislation

As I suggested last week, the prospects for the Waxman-Markey bill passing Congress this term don’t seem particularly high.  President Obama is expending significant political capital on health care reform.  The Senate is occupied with the Sotomayor Supreme Court hearings.  And the politics of climate legislation may be even tougher in the Senate than in …

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Birthing Respect

I was a whale lawyer for years (or, more correctly, a lawyer for people working to protect whales and their habitat).  I therefore can’t resist the urge to link to this terrific piece in the NY Times magazine on the developing relationship between gray whales and their human fans in Laguna San Ignacio, one of the few remaining gray …

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Back to the future in northwest federal forests

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar today announced the withdrawal of the Bush administration’s last-minute revisions of the Northwest Forest Plan. Interior will also ask a federal court to vacate the 2008 modification of critical habitat for the northern spotted owl, and will review the 2008 spotted owl recovery plan, heavily criticized by outside scientists, which was …

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A Silver Lining to the Supreme Court Term for Environmentalists?

In assessing the environmental train wreck that was the just-concluded Supreme Court Term, the question arises: is there anything from that Term from which environmental interests can take comfort? The answer is at least a qualified “yes.” Somewhat lost in the attention focused on the justices’ five major environmental decisions–all of them clear defeats for …

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Cynthia Giles Tackles Busy Agenda in High-Ranking EPA Post

The following was written by Andrew Cohen for Berkeley Law’s Newsroom. As the new enforcement chief for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Cynthia Giles [Berkeley Law alum of] ’78 is anything but naïve about the enormity of her position and the pressure it brings. “We have a lot of important work to do,” says …

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