Guest Blogger John Graham: California Court Decision Will Affect Future Use of Carbon Offsets to Mitigate Emissions of Development
The California Court of Appeal Rules San Diego County’s Climate Action Plan Violates CEQA
The challenge to San Diego County’s Climate Action Plan (“CAP”) in Golden Door has been closely watched by many interested in the use of carbon offsets to mitigate GHG impacts in California. Simply put, carbon offsets are mechanisms that reflect off-site GHG reductions—from activities like reforestation—that can, in some cases, compensate for a project’s GHG emissions. Litigation over San Diego County’s CAP has lasted years; on June 12, the Court of Appeal...
CONTINUE READINGClimate Litigation 2020
Here’s the state of play and some thoughts about the future.
Trump Administration has been a fertile source of litigation. With the election only about three months away, this seems like a good time to see how things stand in climate-related case. In a nutshell, climate litigation has been a growth industry under Trump, and the Administration has done poorly in court. The Current State of Play Types of Lawsuits The Sabin Center at Columbia maintains a database of U.S. climate litigation, which gives an overall sense of what t...
CONTINUE READINGHow To Ensure A More Sustainable Supply Chain For Electric Vehicle Batteries
New CLEE & NRGI Report Launch Today & 9am PT Webinar
CLEE and the Natural Resource Governance Institute (NRGI) are pleased to release today the new report "Sustainable Drive, Sustainable Supply: Priorities to Improve the Electric Vehicle Battery Supply Chain." The report identifies key challenges and solutions to ensure battery supply chain sustainability through a multi-stakeholder approach, based on our outreach to experts in the field. The global transition from fossil fuel-powered vehicles to battery electric ...
CONTINUE READINGWasting Away in Methaneville
Another Trump rollback gets slapped down in court.
A week ago, a federal district court overturned yet another ill-conceived rollback by the Trump Administration. The case, California v. Bernhardt, involved releases of methane, a potent greenhouse gas. The legal flaws in the rollback by the Bureau of Land Management, are all too typical of the Administration’s work product. The Administration has repeatedly lost in court because an agency failed to do its homework. A little background: The Obama Administration had i...
CONTINUE READINGPlanet Earth as Desert Island: “Lord of the Flies” or “Gilligan’s Island”?
Or in more technical terms, the Tragedy of the Commons? Or its inverse?
Lord of the Flies is a memorable novel about a group of English schoolboys who are marooned on a desert island. They quickly descend into savagery and violence. The book can be seen as a parable of the philosopher Thomas Hobbes’s view that human life in a state of nature is short, nasty, and brutish. But there was actually a real shipwreck a number of years after the book was written, and that’s not what happened to the marooned boys at all. In 1965, six boys a...
CONTINUE READINGTrump Administration’s Court Challenge to California-Quebec Cap-and-Trade Agreement Again Rejected
U.S. District Court Rejects Feds' Latest Constitutional Attack on California's Climate Change Initiative
Three strikes and you're out. That adage, particularly timely given Major League Baseball's belated start of its 2020 season this week, is just as apt when it comes to litigation as it is to our nation's pastime. For the second time in four months, U.S. District Court Judge William Shubb has rejected a constitutional challenge the Trump Administration has pursued against the State of California and, specifically, California's Air Resources Board (CARB). In hi...
CONTINUE READINGHow NOT to Manage a Crisis
There were basic errors in organizing the White House pandemic response. It's a teachable moment in crisis management.
The rap has been that the White House just ignored medical experts and left everything to the politicos. A NY Times story over the weekend reveals that the story was more complicated. It discloses basic failures in management and crisis response since early in the coronavirus outbreak. Those failures should be heeded by future leaders. The Times attributes the key government decisions since early Spring to a task force led by White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows....
CONTINUE READINGWhat Did We Know and When Did We Know It?
Nothing about Trump’s environmental policies has been a surprise. He won anyway.
One thing you can say about Donald Trump is that he didn't hide the ball. He told us exactly what he would do about the environment. Many people who say they care about climate change or the environment apparently didn't care enough to come to the polls and vote for his opponent. People who liked what he was saying did come out to vote. Five months before the election, Trump announced his "America First Energy Plan." Basically, what he's done since then has been...
CONTINUE READINGConstitutional Rights in a Pandemic
When does public health override individual rights?
Lockdowns and social distancing impinge on activities that are protected by the Constitution. That’s been true in many states of church services and in some states of abortion. When the cases have come before they courts, they have often turned to a 1905 Supreme Court case decision, Jacobson v. Massachusetts, which upheld a state law requiring smallpox vaccination. Courts are all over the map about what Jacobson means in the 21st Century. Some judges have viewed Jac...
CONTINUE READINGEV Battery Supply Chain Sustainability & Mining
Register for forthcoming report launch webinar on Thursday, July 23rd, from 9-10am PT
The adoption of millions of electric vehicles needed to combat climate change will mark a major shift in mining activities across the world. To get the needed lithium, cobalt and other minerals for the batteries, countries and companies are turning to deep-sea mining, lithium deposits in Nevada and California's Salton Sea, and further exploiting resources in places such as the South American "lithium triangle" region and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) cobalt ...
CONTINUE READINGJoin Our Mailing List
Climate policy is changing rapidly. Stay in the loop with expert analysis via email Monday - Friday.
