Month: December 2012
Yes, California Can Spend the Cap-and-Trade Auction Proceeds
California’s 2012-13 budget assumed that $500 million of cap-and-trade auction proceeds could be used to offset the cost of greenhouse gas emission reduction programs traditionally supported by the General Fund. Two recent stories, one in the San Francisco Chronicle, the other in ClimateWire, report that since the California Legislative Analyst’s office found only $100 million …
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CONTINUE READINGLA River oral argument: the Justices debate how to tell the Ninth Circuit that it screwed up
I attended the oral argument on Tuesday in L.A. Flood Control District v. NRDC. (See Sean’s post for an in-depth background on the case, and Richard’s initial reactions to the oral argument). The Justices were actively engaged and appeared to have a strong grasp of the underlying facts about the District’s MS4. Much of the …
CONTINUE READINGA Plea from Doha
As Jonathan has noted, the international climate negotiations now underway in Doha, Qatar are receiving little media attention and are not expected to result in a major political breakthrough. And, most of the time, it’s difficult for those not in the melee to parse the speeches, interventions, and positions taken by countries at these talks, …
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CONTINUE READINGBreaking News: Judge Rules San Diego’s SB 375 Transportation Plan Violates State Environmental Law
San Diego Superior Court Judge Timothy Taylor today ruled that the San Diego Association of Government’s (SANDAG) regional transportation plan, with a sustainability chapter as required by SB 375, violated the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). Judge Taylor concluded that the environmental review accompanying the plan, as required by CEQA, did not sufficiently analyze the …
CONTINUE READINGToday’s Supreme Court Arguments in Los Angeles County Flood Control District
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals got no love from either the U.S. Supreme Court or the advocates appearing before it today in Los Angeles County Flood Control District v. Natural Resources Defense Counsel. Nor did a previously-unheard-from government actor similarly absent from the Supreme Court chambers today. Yesterday Sean Hecht posted on the …
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CONTINUE READINGChallenging L.A. candidates to get specific on environmental sustainability
What would a sustainable Los Angeles look like? Most agree that we want L.A. to have air that doesn’t make us sick; we could do with a lot less traffic and better transit; we want clean, reliable power and water; we should fight pollution hotspots; and we want well-paying jobs that can sustain our communities …
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CONTINUE READINGSupreme Court Rules Federal Flooding of State Forest Lands an Unconstitutional Taking
Today was a busy day for the environment in the U.S. Supreme Court. Not only did the justices hear arguments in a potentially-important Clean Water Act case. (More on that in a future post.) The Court also issued its first decision among the five environmental cases pending before it this Term–three of which involve property …
CONTINUE READINGHow the Democrats’ Supermajority Can Improve California’s Downtowns
Now that Democrats in California have achieved the Pete Wilson Supermajority in the legislature, they should focus on two key reforms to revitalize the state’s downtowns and ensure more efficient land use. First, the supermajority should put on the ballot a constitutional initiative to lower the threshold for passing local tax measures to fund transit. …
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CONTINUE READINGFeeling the Heat
The forecast for the end of this century seems to be getting worse. New measurements, reported by E&E here, indicate that Greenland is shedding ice rapidly — and Antarctica is also shedding: Ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica are shrinking three times faster than they were in the 1990s, and their contribution to global sea …
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CONTINUE READINGDeconstructing Today’s Supreme Court Arguments in Decker v. Northwest Environmental Defense Center
Legal Planet colleague Holly Doremus did an excellent job last week of previewing today’s U.S. Supreme Court arguments in Decker v. Northwest Environmental Defense Center, a potentially important case involving the scope of USEPA’s point source permit jurisdiction under the Clean Water Act. But given the results of those arguments and a major, late-breaking regulatory …
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