Region: National
Pricing Carbon: What Does It Actually Accomplish?
Pricing carbon may not work the way economists thought.
In theory, pricing carbon should incentivize emissions reductions. In reality, it is unclear to what extent that takes place unless the carbon price is very high. This is not to say that pricing carbon is useless, but the main benefits may take different forms. Basically, there are two ways of putting a price on carbon. …
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CONTINUE READINGLooking Ahead: Inauguration Day, 2021.
There are 3 plausible scenarios for the new balance of power.
Inauguration day is a year from today. What will the balance of power be then? The House doesn’t seem to be in play. Democrats have an uphill fight to win the Senate, so a GOP White House would probably mean a GOP Senate. That leaves three likely scenarios, with different implications for environmental law. Scenario …
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CONTINUE READINGJuliana and the Future of Climate Litigation
Asking judges to pass judgment on all U.S. energy policy was a bridge too far.
The Ninth Circuit threw out the Juliana litigation this morning. The two judges in the majority basically said, legalistic language, that you can’t get the Green New Deal by court order. It was wrong for the Supreme Court to step in at the last minute to put the trial on hold, rather than giving the …
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CONTINUE READINGCongress Mandates Pentagon Climate Action
The GOP’s climate denial doesn’t extend to DOD.
Everyone says climate laws can never pass Congress. But there’s a major exception. Each year since Trump took office, Congress has passed climate legislation as part of Defense Department spending. Trump has signed all of those laws. In 2017, there was a congressional finding that climate change is a threat to national security. In 2018, …
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CONTINUE READINGDark Waters in Dark Times
Citizen Petition Presses EPA To Call Chemicals in Environmental Docudrama “Hazardous Waste”
This holiday season, A-list actors drew moviegoers to a film with a distinctly un-Hollywood plot line: A company dumps thousands of pounds of toxic, long-lived chemicals (PFAS, or per-and polyfluoroalkyl substances) into unlined pits that drain into a farming community’s drinking water. Local residents fall ill, some terminally. A heroic attorney (Mark Ruffalo) represents them …
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CONTINUE READINGMisunderstanding the Law of Causation
Trump’s NEPA proposal flunks Torts as well as Environmental Science 101.
Last week’s NEPA proposal bars agencies from considering many of the harms their actions will produce, such as climate change. These restrictions profoundly misunderstand the nature of environmental problems and are based on the flimsiest of legal foundations. Specifically, the proposal tells agencies they do not need to consider environmental “effects if they are remote …
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CONTINUE READINGPride Goeth Before a Fall
Trump thinks he can tell courts how to interpret NEPA. He’s wrong.
White House has just released its proposed revisions to the rules about environmental impact statements. The White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) simply does not have the kind of power that it is trying to arrogate to itself. The proposal is marked by hubris about the government’s ability to control how the courts apply the …
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CONTINUE READINGAndy and Dave Shoot the Breeze
An inside look at the Trump Administration.
[Open with a shot of Interior Secretary David Bernhardt at his desk with his phone to his ear. Ring tone in the background. Split screen after EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler picks up.] Bernhardt: Hey Andy, how ya doin’? How’s life in the Inferior Department? Wheeler: Not so bad, Davey boy, not so bad. B: You …
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CONTINUE READINGA Paper Tiger?
Trump is proposing big changes to CEQ regs. But they may not matter.
The Trump Administration is trying to gut the current White House rules on environmental impact statements. Some people view this move as a death blow to an important environmental tool. Here’s what Trump is trying to do and why it may not matter as much as people fear. As to what Trump & Co. are …
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CONTINUE READINGHappy Birthday, NEPA!
NEPA turns 50 today. Its passage was the beginning of modern environmental law.
Welcome to 2020. Before we start worrying about the year ahead, it’s worth taking a look backward. Today marks the fiftieth anniversary of the passage of the National Environmental Policy Act, usually called NEPA for short. When he signed NEPA into law, President Nixon said: “It is particularly fitting that my first official act in …
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