2024: Ending on a Dark Note
It was a pretty good year for the environment – until November 5, that is.
No point in mincing words: 2024 ended on a grim note for anyone who cares about the environment. Donald Trump is once again in the White House. His record in the first term made him in the most anti-environmental President in history. The story of the next four years will be a struggle to limit his damage while trying to continue progress at the state level and in the private sector. Although the outcome of the presidential race bodes ill for environmental protect...
CONTINUE READINGTest Your Knowledge of Climate Law
How much do you really know about the law relating to climate change?
In case you're stressing out over the election --and you should be, whichever side you're -- this little quiz could offer a welcome diversion. Climate change is inevitably a complex subject. Test your own knowledge of the legal aspects of the subject by answering a few quick questions. Don't worry if you have trouble. Our audience isn’t just people who live and breathe climate law. We do our best to make sure that you don’t need to know the answers to any of the...
CONTINUE READINGThe Environmental Gifts of the Magi
Clean air. Clean water. We receive these public goods every day without payment, as gifts from everyone to all of us.
One of the Christmas classics is the Jimmy Stewart movie, It’s a Wonderful Life. Stewart’s character is feeling suicidal, until he learns how much he has unknowingly helped others and how grateful they are. It’s heartwarming if also very corny. There’s a flip side to that story: the need to remember how much others have contributed to our own lives. That includes people we don’t know who have helped give us a better planet on which to live. Even the mos...
CONTINUE READINGThere are Piles of Coal in America’s Christmas Stocking
Coal is piling up, unused, at powerplants across the country
Bad children, supposedly, will get only lumps of coal in their stockings. That could be taken as a metaphor for the anti-environmental programs coming down the line, but I have in mind something a bit less metaphorical. According to a recent report, coal-fired power plants have immense piles of coal – 138 million tons, equal to the entire output of Appalachia. There’s a reason for that: coal plants aren’t burning as much coal as they used to. When Trump first to...
CONTINUE READINGLooking Ahead to the Second Trump Administration
Does the IRA have staying power?
This is the seventh in a series of posts. The first post is here. The second post is here. The third post is here. The fourth post is here. The fifth post is here. The sixth post is here. The incoming Trump Administration has, of course, called for ending efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and repealing the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), the Biden Administration’s signature bill that provides dramatic expansions of subsidies for investments in c...
CONTINUE READINGBroadening the Scope of Climate Policy
How to expand climate policy to new places and new sectors
This is the sixth in a series of posts. The first post is here. The second post is here. The third post is here. The fourth post is here. The fifth post is here. The political dynamics of decarbonization that I’ve sketched out are very specific to time, space, and economic sector. The policy approaches that may work to advance decarbonization in the electricity sector will not be identical to the ones that may work to advance decarbonization in the trans...
CONTINUE READINGGood & Bad Environmental News From the U.S. Supreme Court
Escalating Legal Attacks on California's Longstanding Clean Air Act "Waiver" Authority
This past week, the U.S. Supreme Court issued important orders in two closely-related environmental cases previously decided by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. Last Friday the justices granted review in Diamond Alternative Energy v. Environmental Protection Agency, agreeing to decide whether fossil fuel manufacturers have legal standing to challenge an EPA decision under the federal Clean Air Act (CAA). On Monday, the Court denied review i...
CONTINUE READINGHow to Commit to Decarbonization
Feedback effects can lock in decarbonization policies, for better and for worse
This is the fifth in a series of posts. The first post is here. The second post is here. The third post is here. The fourth post is here. Decarbonization is a long-term challenge, and it requires commitments to drive the investments required for innovation and deployment of non-fossil-fuel energy sources. But long-term commitments, which are more effective at driving investments, are also vulnerable to reversals due to electoral changes or pushback from ex...
CONTINUE READINGWhat Is A “Sustainable Battery”?
CLEE's Global Forum for Sustainable Batteries releases a 2040 Sustainable Battery Vision
As the market for the electric buses, cars, trucks, and trains that help curb the climate crisis continues to grow globally, the battery supply chain faces increased scrutiny. Minerals like lithium, nickel, graphite, and cobalt are too often mined and processed in ways that contribute to harming communities and ecosystems, while the batteries often face wasteful end-of-life disposal. To address this challenge and identify solutions, Berkeley Law’s Center for Law, En...
CONTINUE READINGOur Mission: Keeping Hope Alive
If you read Legal Planet, you know the work of the environmental law centers at Berkeley and UCLA is critical. Now is the time to support it.
States like California will be the best hope for making progress in the next four years. Keeping the torch burning -- helping California succeed -- will be challenging. Our environmental law centers at Berkeley and UCLA are at the heart of this work. We run lean operations, and every dollar of support goes a long way. This work is even more important now. Trump 2.0 will likely bring a tsunami of anti-environmental actions. While the first Trump Administration ...
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