Year: 2018
Negative Greenhouse Gas Emissions, the National Academies, and the Law
What does the scaling-up of negative emissions technologies for environmental law?
In my previous posts , I described how most emissions scenarios that are expected to keep warming within 2 or 1.5°C rely on negative emissions technologies (NETs) at large scales and how the new report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change addresses NETs (as well as how solar geoengineering could offer an additional means to …
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CONTINUE READINGVocê Fala Português?
Brazil’s New Environmental Crisis Raises Crucial Constitutional and Advocacy Issues
As Dan noted last week, and as E & E News reports today, Brazil’s President-Elect, Jair Bolsonaro, is not only an authoritarian quasi-fascist (no exaggeration in those terms), but is also horrific for the environment. And that, in turn, is not simply bad for Brazil and South America, but for everyone on the planet. In …
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CONTINUE READINGA Global Standard for a Global Problem
Emmett Institute Submits Comment in Support of CARB’s Proposed Tropical Forest Standard
The Emmett Institute submitted a comment to the California Air Resources Board (CARB) yesterday in support of its proposed Tropical Forest Standard (“Standard”). If approved, this Standard would provide CARB a set of criteria to follow when determining whether to trade tropical forest offsets between California’s Cap and Trade Program and a foreign emissions trading …
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CONTINUE READINGPolitics, the Environment, and the Rural/Urban Divide
Rural areas have been home to regulatory skeptics. But there may be ways of changing that.
Is there an urban/rural split in America? Definitely so, in politics, demography, and economics — and on the environment. Consider this, from Dan Balz at the Washington Post: “in the 2,332 counties that make up small-town and rural America, [Trump] swamped his Democratic rival, winning 60 percent of the vote to Clinton’s 34 percent.” But Balz reports …
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CONTINUE READINGVMT Mitigation Webinar – Tuesday October 30, 10-11am
Berkeley Law’s free event will feature the Governor’s Office of Planning and Research
Under Senate Bill 743 (Steinberg, 2013), California law now requires developers of new projects, like apartment buildings, offices, and roads, to analyze and mitigate the amount of additional driving miles the projects generate. To facilitate compliance with SB 743, some local and regional leaders are considering creating “banks” or “exchanges” to allow developers to fund …
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CONTINUE READINGNot “SAFE” For California
Emmett Institute Submits Comments on Trump Administration’s Proposed Rollback of California Motor Vehicle Emission Standards Waiver
Today, the Emmett Institute submitted comment letters to EPA and NHTSA urging the withdrawal of the Trump Administration’s so-called “Safer Affordable Fuel-Efficient” Vehicles Rule for Model Years 2021-2026 Passenger Cars and Light Trucks. The proposed rule would freeze federal fuel economy standards for MY 2021-2026 vehicles at 2020 levels, and revoke California’s waiver, granted five years …
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CONTINUE READINGStates Rally Around Renewables
States have ignored Trump to promote clean energy within their borders.
CLEE published a survey of state energy policies through 2017. The trend toward renewables has continued in 2018. Even after nearly two years of the Trump Presidency, states haven’t given up. Instead, they’re moving forward aggressively. If anything, Trump seems to have stimulated these states to try even harder. Here’s a quick rundown of what’s …
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CONTINUE READINGHow I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Scooter
Criticism of electric scooters misses the climate change and pedestrian safety benefits
If you live in a major city on the West Coast or in handful of cities on the East Coast, you probably have an opinion on the electric scooters that have been dropped haphazardly onto your local streets and sidewalks. And it’s probably not a positive one. But I’m here to tell you why scooters …
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CONTINUE READINGOn the future of climate policy
A response to William Nordhaus’s comments about how essential carbon taxes are to addressing climate change
William Nordhaus recently (and deservedly) won the Nobel Prize for Economics for his work on the economic implications of climate change and policies to respond to climate change. In the press coverage after the award, some comments were attributed to Nordhaus that I think are important to consider in more depth – in part because …
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CONTINUE READINGLand Use Planning, Transit, and the Dodgers: The Legal Planet World Series Special
Stop the Myths About Evil Walter O’Malley
Since the World Series starts in a few hours, I fully expect the standard kvetchers to come out of the woodwork and complain about Los Angeles stealing the Dodgers from Brooklyn, etc. Peter Golenbock, in Bums: An Oral History of the Brooklyn Dodgers, compares O’Malley to Hitler and Stalin. Nonsense. It is time to set …
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