Year: 2012

The strange saga of how Los Angeles County’s stormwater pollution ended up in the Supreme Court

Tomorrow, the Supreme Court will hear oral argument in Los Angeles County Flood Control District v. Natural Resources Defense Council. This case involves a lawsuit by clean-water advocates to require our County Flood Control District to take responsibility for ensuring that polluted stormwater doesn’t impair our local water quality in two local rivers. The Ninth …

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Senator Rubio Goes to Moscow

In Internet time, it’s already an old story, but worth repeating.  Senator Marco Rubio, a Florida Tea Party guy, was asked in a GQ interview how old he believes the earth is.  His reply: I’m not a scientist, man. I can tell you what recorded history says, I can tell you what the Bible says, …

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What to expect in the logging roads case

Cross-posted at CPRBlog. This coming Monday, Dec. 3, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral argument in the logging roads case. The case involves two consolidated petitions, Decker v. Northwest Environmental Defense Center and Georgia Pacific v. Northwest Environmental Defense Center , both challenging the same decision of the Ninth Circuit, Northwest Environmental Defense Center …

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On the Irrelevance of Doha: The Demand for an Absence of International Regimes

Just compare for a moment the high expectations around Copenhagen in 2009 and the obscurity of Doha today, and you can quickly get a sense of the basic contemporary irrelevance of UN bodies in the creation of climate policy.  (At the New York Times website as of this writing, Doha doesn’t even merit a mention …

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Chasing Ice, For Now

Last night I watched glaciers more than 30,000 years old break open and crash into the ocean – disappearing in mere seconds.  In photographer James Balog’s new documentary, Chasing Ice, he and a small team embark upon a multi-year “Extreme Ice Survey” to document 18 glaciers in remote regions of the world, including Iceland, Greenland and Alaska.  …

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Environmental law jobs blog

Tseming Yang, distinguished Berkeley Law alum and currently professor of law at Santa Clara University, is offering a great public service for environmental law students and lawyers who may be looking for a job shift. His Environmental Law and Other Jobs/Opportunities blog collects information from a range of sources in one convenient location. Check it …

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Renewing Britain’s Clean Energy Vows

The British are ramping up their efforts on renewable energy.  The NY Times reported a few days ago that the new plan will “gradually quadruple the charges levied on consumers and businesses to help support electricity generation from low-carbon sources, to a total of about £9.8 billion, or $15.7 billion, in the 2020-21 fiscal year, …

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Should we revive an extinct Galapagos tortoise?

Cross-posted at CPRBlog. The Washington Post reports today that scientists think they can resurrect the Pinta Island subspecies of Galapagos tortoise whose last remaining member, “Lonesome George” (pictured), died this summer. Scientists at Ecuador’s Galapagos National Park say they have found enough Pinta Island genetic material in tortoise on another nearby island that an intensive …

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Heating Up the Eurozone

The EU has issued a new report about climate impacts.  The picture is mixed, with some good news (warmer winters in the Northern and Eastern Europe) but bad news in other respects.  The report has this to say about some disaster risks: Increases in health risks associated with river and coastal flooding are projected in …

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Highly Uncertain But Not in Doubt

It seems paradoxical to say that climate change is uncertain but not in doubt.  At this point, we can be highly confident that greenhouse gases are disrupting the climate system and that the disruption will be very serious unless we act.  But there’s considerable uncertainty about   the magnitude of climate change and its local …

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