The Quagmire of Clean Water Act Jurisdiction
The scope of federal jurisdiction over water bodies and wetlands remains as murky as ever.
The Biden Administration announced on Monday that it would not meet a February target date to issue a revised definition of federal jurisdiction under the Clean Water Act. It still plans to issue a revised definition later in the year. That sounds like a very technical issue. But it actually determines the extent to which the federal government can prevent water pollution and protect wetlands across the nation. The Biden proposal basically calls for case-by-case decision...
CONTINUE READINGWhat Does the Future Hold for the American Gas Station?
The end of the gas car will eventually leave 100,000 stations behind.
Gas stations have been fixtures in our world for a century or more. There are even books of photos of picturesque gas stations, some futuristic, others quaint. We’re transitioning into a world dominated by electric vehicles. What does the future hold for these icons of the fossil fuel era? There are now about a hundred thousand gas stations in the U.S. A majority are owned by operators with only one station, making them quintessential small businesses. They don’...
CONTINUE READING2022: The Year Ahead
Here are the five biggest things to watch for.
There will be a lot going on this year in the environmental sphere. I wanted to focus on a few big things to keep an eye on, rather than trying to give a long, comprehensive survey. Here are the five biggest things to watch for: Midterm elections. As of now, things are looking very good for the Republicans. If they sweep the House and Senate in November, that will mean the end of any chance the Democrats might have to enact their environmental agenda. It could a...
CONTINUE READING2021: The Year in Review
After the dark days of the Trump Era, environmental policy had a very good year
The continuing pandemic sometimes makes it feel like time is frozen. But 2021 was a big year for environmental policy. Politics. The biggest news of 2021, for the environment as well as other reasons, was the replacement of Donald Trump by Joseph Biden. On the regulatory front, the change in White House control instantly stopped the tide of rollbacks. The Biden Administration has begun to reverse those rollbacks. It is also seeking to implement important new regulat...
CONTINUE READINGRescuing FEMA (and ourselves)
FEMA needs to grow in order to handle its work. The need for growth will only get greater as time goes on.
2021 was a year of disasters, with extraordinary heat waves, fires, a string of hurricanes, a cold snap that left Texas in the dark, winter tornados, and torrential rains. FEMA has been left badly overstretched. That’s an urgent problem, and it’s likely a foretaste of the future. This is not just a problem for the overloaded folks at FEMA. It’s a problem for all of us, in an era where disasters are coming fast and furious. The agency is stretched very thin ...
CONTINUE READINGPositive Signs That California’s New Housing Laws Will be Enforced
Recent Actions by California Courts & State Officials Are Encouraging, & Push Back Against Local Government Recalcitrance on the Housing Reform Front
In a recent post, I analyzed the California Legislature's recent passage and Governor Gavin Newsom's signing into law of two important bills--SB 9 and SB 10--designed to confront California's well-documented housing crisis. Those laws represent but the latest chapter in the Legislature's record-setting enactment of numerous statutes in recent years to incentivize and mandate construction of new low and moderate income housing in California. Those state measures h...
CONTINUE READINGEveryday Christmas: The Gift of the Commons
Clean air. Clean water. We receive these public goods every day without payment
One of the Christmas classics is the Jimmy Stewart movie, It’s a Wonderful Life. George Bailey, Stewart's character, is despondent about his life but then learns how much he has unknowingly helped others and how grateful they are. It's heartwarming, if also a bit 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 t...
CONTINUE READINGOn the Frustrations of Climate Politics
It’s not just the shortcomings of Joe Manchin. Climate legislation is an inherently tough political challenge.
Yesterday, Joe Manchin announced that he couldn’t support the Build Back Better reconciliation bill. Unless Biden can somehow coax him back to the negotiating table, that dooms what would have been a major breakthrough in climate policy. Manchin bears responsibility for this deeply regrettable decision. But climate legislation is hard, even in more favorable political settings such as California. Manchin’s financial ties to the fossil fuel industry may help expl...
CONTINUE READINGRemembering Electric Vehicle Pioneer Ryan Popple, 1977-2021
Former Proterra CEO was a major contributor to UC Berkeley/UCLA Law EV report
Ryan Popple, former CEO and co-founder of electric bus company ProTerra, venture capitalist for transportation electrification, early Tesla employee, Iraq War veteran and father of three, passed away on Wednesday night at the age of 44, for reasons unknown. I had the good fortune to meet Ryan back in 2012, when UC Berkeley Law and UCLA Law convened a group of experts (including Ryan) on ways that California could dramatically scale up the sale of battery electric vehi...
CONTINUE READINGCOPs as Three-Ring Circus
Reflections on Glasgow a few weeks later
It is often hard to make sense of what happens at the annual climate meetings, and easy to get cynical. For two or three weeks, climate politics gets intense worldwide news coverage. Acute pressure mounts over the two weeks to get some announcable achievement, which almost always happens after all-night negotiations on the final day. Then things move on. Given the long-standing and continuing failure of negotiations to achieve real, concrete progress in handling climate ...
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