Save the Monarch!
The plight of California's iconic butterfly highlights the need to overhaul the state's endangered species law
The Monarch butterfly is an iconic species for Californians. And it is heading rapidly towards extinction within the state, as the population counts for the California population this year indicate that butterfly numbers fell 86% in a single year, over a 99% drop since the 1980s, and the size of the population is now small enough that it may not be able to bounce back. The collapse in the Monarch butterfly population reflects a range of human pressures on the specie...
CONTINUE READINGClimate policy and horcruxes
What Harry Potter might have to teach us about making climate policy more resilient to political shifts
As the most recent report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change makes clear, the negative impacts of climate change are now upon us, and we have a very limited amount of time to decarbonize global economies in order to reduce the risk of catastrophic impacts from climate change, impacts that might begin as soon as mid-century. Moreover, reducing and preventing extreme climate change will take long-term (decades and longer) commitments to restrict the extra...
CONTINUE READINGEPA’s Return to Bush-Era Clean Air Act Reforms Sacrifices Agency’s Duty to Protect Environment, Ignores the Law
Quiet changes buried behind the big de-regulatory headlines spell disaster for the environment
As I explained back in August, the Trump Administration’s proposed Clean Power Plan replacement (the “Affordable Clean Energy” or ACE rule) came with a significant change to how the EPA has traditionally interpreted the Clean Air Act’s New Source Review (NSR) provisions mandating pre-construction environmental review and the installation of air pollution controls to offset emission increases. In my previous post, I outlined the practical dangers of the propos...
CONTINUE READINGThe Worst of a Bad Lot
They’re all bad, but this regulatory rollback effort stands out for sheer incompetence.
The Trump Administration has many energy and environmental initiatives, none of them good. But in terms of shoddy analysis and tenuous evidence, the worst is the Administration’s attempt to freeze fuel efficiency standards. For sheer lack of professionalism, the Administration’s cost-benefit analysis is hard to match. And you can’t even say that the Administration is captive to industry, because this isn’t something industry asked for. It’s a case of untether...
CONTINUE READINGStraws in the Wind? Climate Change and the GOP.
There are some signs the GOP may finally bestarting to acknowledge the reality of climate change.
Is Republican climate denial starting to crack? The GOP’s official position has long been that climate change isn’t happening, or if it is, it’s not caused by humans, and anyway it’s not that serious and there’s nothing to be done about. Three events last week may be signs that this position is starting to weaken. The first event involved the Pentagon, perhaps the part of the government with the strongest support among Republicans. Last year, the Republi...
CONTINUE READINGWhat’s Wrong with Juliana (and What’s Right?)
The odds against the "children's case" are bad and getting worse. But there's a valid insight at its core.
Juliana v. United States, often called the “children’s case,” is an imaginative effort to make the federal government responsible for its role in promoting the production and use of fossil fuels and its failure to control carbon emissions. They ask the court to “declare the United States' current environmental policy infringes their fundamental rights, direct the agencies to conduct a consumption-based inventory of United States CO2 emissions," and use that in...
CONTINUE READINGGuest Blogger Justin Pidot: Interior Proposes New FOIA Rule that Inhibits Government Transparency
The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) guarantees public access to the records of federal agencies. It embodies the view that government works best when it works in the open. On the Friday between Christmas and New Year’s Eve, the Department of the Interior quietly published a proposed regulation that will make it harder for the public to access records. While most of Interior was shut down due to a lapse in appropriations, it seems that shielding itself from public scr...
CONTINUE READINGRegulatory Review in Anti-Regulatory Times: Congress
Congress overturned a host of regs at the start of the Trump Administration. Looks more like a random walk than a systematic effort.
In theory, cost-benefit analysis should be just as relevant when the government is deregulating as when it is imposing new regulations. But things don’t seem to work that way. This is the second of two blog posts analyzing how costs and benefits figured in decisions during the past two years of unified GOP control of the federal government. Today, I focus on Congress. For the first time in history, Congress made aggressive use of the Congressional Review Act (CRA) t...
CONTINUE READINGPolicy Brief: Low-Income Multifamily Energy Savings Retrofits
New CLEE/UCLA Policy Brief Highlights Top Solutions to Increase Access to Incentives and Unlock Benefits
Improving the energy performance of existing buildings will be key to achieving California’s efficiency and greenhouse gas emission goals. But owners of low-income, multifamily buildings face some of the greatest obstacles, including difficult access to capital, complex financing arrangements, and competing renovation needs. Residents in these buildings also experience a “split incentive” problem that limits owners’ financial interest in upgrades that primarily r...
CONTINUE READINGUsing Emergency Powers to Fight Climate Change
If Trump can stretch emergency powers, maybe they can be used for other purposes too.
Could a future President invoke emergency powers against climate change? Republicans are apparently worried that if Trump could use emergency powers by declaring border security a national emergency, the next president could do the same thing for climate change. There’s no doubt that this would be far more legitimate than Trump’s wall effort. Border crossings are much lower than they were ten years ago; he has said in the recent past that his prior efforts hav...
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