Month: March 2014

In Harm’s Way

Millions of people are in the path of rising seas. The time for action is now.

The NY Times has run a series of articles in the past few days dealing with disaster issues.  Taken together, they highlight the urgency of government action to protect populations in harm’s way. One article dealt generally with the threat posed by sea level rise. Miami is something of a poster-child for these problems, given its …

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As Oil by Rail Gains Momentum, Is California On Track to Protect Human Health and the Environment?

A closer look at the data and key legal issues

California will soon see a surge in the number of trains carrying crude oil into the state, as oil production in North Dakota’s Bakken region and Canada continues to increase, sending more crude to California refineries. Last week, the California Senate Environmental Quality Committee and Natural Resources Committee held a hearing on the safety of …

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Biofuels and Food Prices

A recent economics paper suggests strongly that biofuels have raised food prices for the world’s poor.

Berkeley economist Brian Wright has a disquieting article in the Winter 2014 issues of the Journal of Economic Perspectives, which just crossed my desk.  JEP is published by the American Economic Association and is a great resource for those of us who are interested in economics but aren’t professional economists.  This article is a case in …

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Justice Roberts Should Welcome EPA’s Proposed New Wetlands Rule

The Environmental Protection Agency today issued a proposed new rule that seeks to clarify exactly how far the federal government’s jurisdiction reaches in requiring permits for the dredging and filling of wetlands.  In doing so, President Obama’s EPA is responding directly to Chief Justice John Roberts’ lament in his concurring opinion in Rapanos v. United …

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Berkeley and UCLA Law Students Take Top Spots at State Environmental Law Negotiations Competition

Students bargain for environmental protection, economic benefits at annual event

Last Friday, the California Bar Association held its 15th Annual Student Environmental Negotiations Competition, at UCLA School of Law.  Negotiations competitions stand beside mock trial and moot court programs as means for students to gain experience with the kind of work they’ll be doing after law school.  The CalBar competition is open to all California …

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Sea Level Rises, Premiums Not So Much

Congress apparently just couldn’t resist restoring subsidies for coastal homeowners.

The President has now signed an important modification of the flood insurance program.  The changes are hard to understand, in part because the bill changed an earlier 2013 law that itself amended the basic statute.  So you have to work through the whole sequence to see what is going on. Before I go into more …

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Reduced VMT from Millennials: Good News From an Unlikely Source

Younger people are driving less, even controlling for the flat economy

Last week I reported on the Caltrans survey findings showing that Californians seem to be driving less. Too good to be true?  Perhaps.  My always-pessimistic colleague Brian Taylor suspects that this is more about the Great Recession than about real changes in driving habits. Brian and his colleagues at the University of California Transportation Center recently …

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The Perils of Rail Transit and Democracy

How Decentralized Decision-Making Can Screw Up Rail Planning and Implementation

Americans seem to love democracy but hate many of the results. We want governmental power to be decentralized, whether it’s across three federal branches or with local control over sometimes regionally oriented land use decisions. But when the inevitable compromise that is required to get majority approval means a less-than-perfect result, from Obamacare to budget …

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California’s Path to 2050

Recent research shows that California can meet its 2050 climate goals at an affordable cost.

Could California make deep cuts in carbon by 2050 (80% below 1990 levels)?  Are the economics feasible?  Those are important questions for California, but they also have a lot to say about what’s feasible for the U.S. and other developing countries as a whole. Last December, UC Davis hosted a forum on the models that …

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Two good recent articles on environmental law

Regulating diffuse harms is a key future challenge for environmental law

JOTWELL is a blog dedicated to highlighting some of the best, recent legal scholarship.  I recently posted a review there of two excellent recent articles in environmental law — I think they’re both terrific because they both highlight what I think will be an increasingly important issue in the future of environmental law: How we …

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