Region: National
Renewable Texas: Lessons from the Lonestar State
Texas has the most wind power in the country and is rapidly building solar. How did that happen?
People are often surprised to learn that Texas is the national leader in wind power, with the twice the generating capacity of any other state. On one notable night in December of 2015, the state got 45% of its power from wind, though the year-round average was only about 10%. In July of this year, the …
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CONTINUE READINGACE or Joker? Trump’s Self-Defeating Climate Rule
The ACE rule adds costs, achieves little, and disempowers the states. Nice job.
The Trump ACE rule violates all the Administration’s own deregulatory principles.To hear Trump talk, the point of deregulation is to reduce the burden of regulation on industry. But weirdly enough, that doesn’t turn out to be true of Trump’s effort to repeal Obama’s Clean Power Plan (CPP) and replace it with his own Affordable Clean …
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CONTINUE READINGNew York’s Big Move
The Empire State has jumped into the first tier of state climate action.
Last week, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo signed a breakthrough climate change law, the “New York State Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act.” What every state does to address climate change is worthwhile, of course, but New York is particularly significant in terms of the national picture. It’s the nation’s third-most populous state and also …
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CONTINUE READINGGuest Blogger Divya Rao: Sen. Udall and Rep. Lowenthal Champion New Legislative Effort to Curb Plastic Waste Pollution
Comprehensive federal legislation on single-use plastics, from bags to straws, anticipated to drop in Fall 2019
This past January, I was one of two students who had the opportunity to travel to Washington D.C. with the Surfrider Foundation and UCLA’s Frank G. Wells Environmental Law Clinic to brief Congress on harms caused by marine plastic pollution and steps the federal government can take to combat the problem by reducing waste from …
CONTINUE READINGHow I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love OIRA
OIRA may have had its problems. What we have right now is much worse.
If you’re like most environmentalists, you probably don’t have a high opinion of OIRA, the White House office that’s supposed to oversee regulations. (For those who are new to this, OIRA stands for the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs.) The complaints are legion: that OIRA lacks transparency, that it acts as a back door …
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CONTINUE READINGWhere’s the Beef?
Mississippi’s “Veggie Burgers” Ban is Almost Certainly Unconstitutional
Mississippi recently passed a law that has the effect of banning terms like “veggie burger.” It’s easy to imagine other states passing similar laws. From an environmental view, that’s problematic, because beef in particular is connected with much higher greenhouse gas emissions than plant products. It’s not just the methane from cow-burps, it’s also all …
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CONTINUE READINGJustice Stevens and the Rule of (Environmental) Law
A simple but powerful principle: courts and agencies should respect statutes.
Justice Stevens and the Rule of (Environmental) Law There’s already been a lot written in the aftermath of Justice Stevens’s death, including Ann Carlson’s excellent Legal Planet post last week. I’d like to add something about an aspect of his jurisprudence that had great relevance to environmental law: his belief in the rule of law, …
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CONTINUE READINGIs the Sun Finally Rising in the Southeast?
Slowly, and a bit grudgingly, the Old South is moving toward solar.
Southern states like to brag about their sunny weather. Florida even calls itself the Sunshine State. Yet the region lags well behind in terms of putting that sunshine to work. But it appears that change is coming. Solar generating capacity in the Southeast is expected to nearly double over the next three years, though from …
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CONTINUE READINGWarren’s public lands policy proposal
The Senator’s policy proposals have a lot of good points, but could be even better
Senator Elizabeth Warren has become famous for her policy plan documents as she runs for President. A few months ago, she released a new one focusing on public lands. The key points in her plan include: A moratorium on all new fossil fuel leasing on federal public lands Providing 10% of US renewable energy from …
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CONTINUE READINGDoes the US have a delegation problem?
A comparison of US and Canadian environmental law indicates perhaps not
One of the big cases at the end of this year’s Supreme Court term was Gundy v. United States, where four justices signaled they were open to reviving a long dormant doctrine, the non-delegation doctrine, to constrain open-ended delegations of authority from Congress to Executive Branch agencies. There’s been various prognostications as to whether the …
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