Month: November 2013

Green Streets for Berkeley?

Green Infrastructure at UC Berkeley

Low Impact Development (LID) or green infrastructure can be used to improve water quality in urban environments through the use of swales, bioretention basins, permeable pavement, and other approaches to managing stormwater. However, there can be challenges to actually putting green infrastructure in place. Max Gomberg and I recently published an Op-Ed in the San …

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The Rhetoric of Cap and Trade

Different ways of framing the concept of cap and trade help drive the public debate.

Discussions of cap and trade tend to frame it in various ways, which often skews the debate.  These different frameworks guide the thoughts of both supporters and critics, sometimes in surprising ways.  There are four different ways to talk about cap and trade, and they tend to lead the debate in very different directions. The …

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The Olympics of Climate Change: Warsaw 2013

What to know, where to watch

It’s that time again! The United Nations’ COP19/CMP9 Climate Change Conference kicked off this week in Warsaw, the start of two weeks of international discussion on climate change.  The conference hosts the parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Kyoto Protocol, as a yearly update and check-in on these treaties, …

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Renewable Energy Beyond 2020 — Lunchtime Conference at UCLA Law next Tuesday

Free event will also launch a new report from UCLA and UC Berkeley law schools on this topic

Please join us on Tuesday, November 19th at UCLA Law for a free lunchtime panel presentation on the future of California’s renewable energy policies beyond 2020.  California is on pace to meet the goal of securing 33 percent of the state’s electricity from renewable sources like solar and wind by 2020.  What energy goals should …

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Capturing Carbon

A recent CRS report provides a wealth of information about carbon capture.  You can learn a lot about the various technologies and how close or far they are from possible adoption.  But for most of us, the technical details matter less than the answers to some key questions: Is carbon capture technically feasible?  Can it …

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Standing for Coal?

In a previous post I questioned whether anyone would have standing to challenge EPA’s new plant regulations for coal plants, considering that coal plants are current uneconomical anyway due to low natural gas prices.  I was pleased that Inside EPA  wrote a story about my argument, and even more pleased that the story reported on …

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Is Missouri v. Holland in the Court’s crosshairs?

Justices look for limits on Treaty Power in domestic dispute case

The headline environmental cases at the Supreme Court this term are of course about the Clean Air Act, specifically about its application to cross-state pollution (as Dan has explained here) and to greenhouse emissions (as Ann has addressed here and here). But sometimes cases that at first glance seem wholly unrelated to the environment could …

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Will Anyone Have Standing to Challenge EPA’s Rules for New Coal Plants?

EPA has issued rules that will essentially require new coal plants to use carbon capture and sequestration, a technology that has not been implemented at full scale yet.  No doubt that coal industry and utilities will try to challenge the rules in court.  But they probably lack standing to do so for a simple reason: …

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Are Polar Bears Really Endangered?

“Glib contrarianism” in environmental journalism

The news web site Slate is known for its counterintuitive articles – so much so, that the term “slatepitch” has been coined.  But sometimes trying to write a counterintuitive article leads you to write something, well, just wrong. Today, Slate ran an article about “Five Species You Thought Were Endangered That Really Aren’t (Including the …

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Energy and Climate Conference — Thursday November 14th at UC Berkeley Law

State Bar event will cover renewables, fuels, and markets in an era of climate change

For Legal Planet readers interested in hearing the latest on energy and climate change law and policy, the Environmental Law Section of the California State Bar will be holding a one-day conference on the subject at the UC Berkeley School of Law on Thursday, November 14th.  Entitled “Energy and Climate Change: California’s Efforts to Reduce …

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