Region: California

Court’s AB 32 Ruling Is Quite Narrow and At Most a Temporary Setback

Cara published a terrific summary of  a tentative California superior court decision in which the court held that the state’s Air Resources Board (CARB) violated  the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) in implementing AB 32, the state’s landmark climate change legislation.  The CEQA portion of the ruling — should the judge stick with it when …

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Calif court tentatively rules AB 32 implementation unlawful

A California superior court has issued a proposed decision, not yet final, holding that ARB failed to comply with the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) in its adoption of the Scoping Plan that is guiding its implementation of AB 32, California’s landmark climate change law.  The ruling proposes to set aside ARB’s CEQA documentation and to …

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California Environmental Blueprint: Environmental monitoring & modeling

This post is the second in our ongoing series on our Environmental Blueprint for California. In our Blueprint, we recommended that Governor Brown establish an independent, statewide agency or council devoted to compilation, modeling, prediction and presentation of environmental quality data. I want to elaborate on what this agency might look like and why we believe …

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California Environmental Blueprint: Protect and Restore Funding

This post is part of an ongoing series on our Environmental Blueprint for California, released by UCLA Law last week.  I’ll talk about the first–and, in many ways, most fundamental–recommendation in our paper: that Governor Brown do what he can to protect and restore stable, robust funding for our State’s core environmental initiatives. My coauthors and …

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Funding dam removal

Many of you have probably heard of the settlement agreements in Klamath River Basin. For those who have not, the short version is that most participants signed two agreements: the Klamath Basin Restoration Agreement and the Klamath Hydroelectric Settlement Agreement. The Hydroelectric Settlement lays out a process that could culminate in the removal of four …

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A Roadmap for Sustainable Consumption

Individual consumption – including household heating and cooling as well as non-business transportation – creates roughly one-third of U.S. energy use and carbon emissions. It would feasible to reduce these emissions by twenty percent in a decade: there is a lot of low-hanging fruit yet to be picked. A range of individual actions, while seemingly …

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Los Angeles and Renewable Energy

Much to the surprise of many observers, including me, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (the country’s largest municipally-owned utility) has met its 2010 goal of providing 20 percent of its electricity from renewable sources.  I’ve written previously about the implementation problems LADWP and other utilities are likely to face in cutting greenhouse …

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UCLA Law releases new environmental blueprint for California

In the looming battle over California’s budget, will there be room for environmental protections?  What should Governor Brown’s top-priority environmental initatives be?  UCLA Law released today “An Environmental Blueprint for California,” giving our view of the priorities Governor Brown should focus on to ensure the state’s environmental health in ways consistent with its economic prosperity.  California faces difficult choices ahead.  …

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Governor Brown makes his first environmental appointments

Jerry Brown has hit the ground running not only in terms of budget work but in putting together his environmental policy team. Today he announced the re-appointment of Mary Nichols as Chair of the California Air Resources Board and the appointment of John Laird as Secretary of the California Natural Resources Agency. Nichols’ reappointment is …

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The Schwarzenegger Legacy: Environmentalism on the Cheap

As Californians say “hasta la vista, baby” to Governor Schwarzenegger this morning, media retrospectives have focused on his environmental accomplishments as one of his few positive legacies. Specifically, they point to his signing of AB 32, the landmark climate change law limiting the state’s greenhouse gas emissions. And Schwarzenegger himself likes to think of himself …

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