Region: National
The NIMBY Presidency
Peter Navarro hates foreign trade. He also hates housing.
Well what a surprise. Not: Before Peter Navarro designed trade wars for President Trump, he orchestrated housing wars in San Diego across five unsuccessful bids for local office. Navarro, then a UC Irvine economics professor, led San Diego’s slow-growth movement in the 1990s, drawing battle lines that still define today’s development fights. His zero-sum view on homebuilding then …
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CONTINUE READINGLocal EV Leadership During Federal Withdrawal
The clean mobility transition is in local hands.
The federal landscape for electric vehicle (EV) investment is laden with pause and uncertainty. High-profile program discontinuations–both planned and executed–threaten to disrupt EV deployment efforts, while unpredictable tariffs interfere with drivers’ ability to afford vehicles. As local leaders work to reconcile ambitious transport decarbonization goals with the current lapse in federal climate leadership, public planners, …
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CONTINUE READINGIs Trump Good for the Oil Industry?
Not particularly, it would appear. If there’s an effect, it’s not big enough to hit the eyes.
No doubt, the industry would rather have Trump in office than Harris. But the effect on industry profits may only be incremental. It would be great to see a rigorous statistical analysis by a finance expert, but a bump to oil profits isn’t obvious in share prices.
CONTINUE READINGChevron’s Losing Play to Avoid Big Damages
Chevron sponsored Super Bowl LIX events and science classes for New Orleans children just weeks before a Louisiana jury ordered it to pay $745 million in damages.
In February and March, Chevron generated headlines for its charity at the Super Bowl in Louisiana. This month, the oil company made very different headlines for being ordered to pay $745 million for damage to the Louisiana coast after a jury verdict. One of these stories shows the company as a town hero in a …
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CONTINUE READINGMAGA vs NOAA, Executive Orders, and Growing IRA Support
The Drain is a new weekly roundup of climate and environmental news from Legal Planet.
Trump wants to “Make Weather a Mystery Again.” The news that started leaking last Friday is that the Trump administration wants to break up the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and essentially end NOAA’s climate work by abolishing its primary research office and forcing the agency to instead help boost U.S. fossil fuel production, according …
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CONTINUE READINGThe Mirage of Trump’s State Climate Law Executive Order
There is no overreach.
On Tuesday, the White House released an Executive Order titled “Protecting American Energy from State Overreach.” It is unclear what the order believes is in need of protection, but it is certainly not the near-term health of our lungs or the long-term livability of our communities. What is clear, fortunately, is that there is little …
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CONTINUE READINGIntroducing Your Legal Planet Weekly Roundup
The L.A. Times Boiling Point is ending its informative weekly news roundups. Here’s your weekly Legal Planet roundup, The Drain.
Good morning! The L.A. Times fantastic Boiling Point column is ending its weekly news roundups of environmental and climate stories. As columnist Sammy Roth noted in his message to readers, “reading and analyzing so many news stories every week takes up an enormous amount of time and energy.” No kidding! I produce something similar for …
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CONTINUE READINGTouched by the Keeling Curve
Teaching the Keeling Curve in International Environmental Law has me reflecting on the role of climate science then and now.
Teaching the climate change unit last week in my International Environmental Law and Policy class, I found myself so moved that I started crying at the board. My poor students thought I was in distress. I was simply telling the story of the Keeling Curve. That’s a daily record of global atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration devised by …
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CONTINUE READINGTrump’s Discordant Coal Quartet
Yesterday’s four executive orders were long on talk and short on action.
Yesterday, flanked by a coal miners in hard hats, Trump signed four executive orders to restore their industry to its past glory. Given that coal is now the most expensive way to generate power other than nuclear, that’s going to be a heavy lift. Like many of Trump’s orders, these four are full of threats and bluster, but will have little immediate effect. These orders give the same impression as many executive orders — that Something Important is Being Done — but they are really more in the way of promises of future action.
CONTINUE READING168 Years of Climate Science
The scientific evidence for climate change traces back before the Civil War.
Climate change is no fad or Johnny-come-lately in science. Rather, our knowledge has grown over 168 years, since an American scientist first discovered the heat-trapping properties of carbon dioxide.Over time, it has become more and more certain that humans are causing climate change and that continuing down that road poses great risks.
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