A Potentially Important Climate Change Court Ruling in the Netherlands
A Dutch environmental organization surprisingly won its novel climate change lawsuit when the government appealed.
Although I am in the midst of a series of blog posts (1, 2, 3) regarding novel technologies in the recent special report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), I take a brief detour to report on a court ruling in the Netherlands regarding climate change. Although I am skeptical of its impact in the case at hand, the ruling might have significant long term and indirect influence, in the Netherlands and elsewhere. The environmental advocacy organizati...
CONTINUE READINGGetting Kavanaugh’s Vote to Uphold Climate Change Regulation
Environmentalists Have a New Secret Weapon
Not for nothing was Brett Kavanaugh referred to as "Voldemort" by Center for Biological Diversity counsel Bill Snape: he is quite hostile to environmental regulation and will freely rewrite statutes to constrict EPA authority. But now environmentalists have a new ace up their sleeves: The price of beer could rise sharply this century, and it has nothing to do with trends in craft brewing. Instead, a new study says beer prices could double, on average, because of the pri...
CONTINUE READINGThe Wild & Scenic Rivers Act Turns 50
Celebrating a Half Century of Protecting America's Rivers--& Hoping for More River Conservation Ahead
1968 was an especially tumultuous year in modern American history. The nation endured the assassinations of both Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy; then-President Lyndon Johnson announced he would not seek reelection due to growing public dissatisfaction with the government's conduct of the Vietnam War; and protests and riots consumed Chicago, Detroit, Washington, D.C. and many other American cities. So it was in stark contrast and a most welcome develop...
CONTINUE READING“National Security” Coal-Bailout Collapses
Trump demanded the use of national security powers to subsidize the coal industry. Looks like that's not happening.
In its desperate effort to save the failing American coal industry, the Trump Administration promised to use emergency powers to keep coal-fired power plants in operation even though they’re not economically viable. That would have been the kind of disruptive change that Trump promised to bring to Washington. But the effort seems to have gone aground, according to Politico. This outcome tells us something about the gap between Trump’s promises of committing regulator...
CONTINUE READINGCitations for environmental and energy law professors 2018
The most-cited environmental and energy law professors in 2013-17
Brian Leiter at Chicago is again doing one of his occasional series identifying the top cited legal scholars in a range of substantive areas. One of the lists he did covered public law scholars including environmental law– however, his list includes a number of top administrative law scholars who do not focus on environmental and energy law. As I did the last time Leiter posted these totals, I thought it might be helpful to our readers to have a list that is focuse...
CONTINUE READINGAnother Possible Means To Keep Global Warming Within 1.5 Degrees Celsius
Did the IPCC bury the lede regarding solar geoengineering?
In my previous posts on the reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), I described how models assume the use of uncertain negative emissions technologies at very large -- if not impossible -- scales in order to keep global warming within 1.5 or two degrees Celsius (1, 2; see also my colleague Julia Stein). Does this mean that we will surpass these limits? No, not necessarily. For one thing, very aggressive reductions of greenhouse gas emissions c...
CONTINUE READINGFour Governor’s Races and the Environment
Here are four of the races that will help drive state energy and environmental policies.
There are a surprising number of governor’s seats in play in this election, with many ranked as toss-ups. After looking at ratings by different experts, I’ve picked four elections as especially interesting. As you’ll see, there were major differences between candidates in these raceson environmental and energy issues. Besides showing yet again why elections matter-- hopefully you figured that out since November 2016, if you hadn't done so earlier -- , the views of ...
CONTINUE READINGMore great environmental and energy law scholarship
Some of the best articles in the field from 2016-17
Some of our readers may be interested in what is happening in environmental and energy legal scholarship. So I thought I’d post again (I also did this in 2016) about the Land Use & Environment Law Review, which is Thomson Reuters/West Publishing’s peer-selected annual compendium of significant legal scholarship in land use and environmental law. About sixty reviewers (made up of environmental law professors) considered the full range of articles published in ...
CONTINUE READINGCEQA and Local Land-Use Regulations
California gubernatorial candidates debate the role of CEQA and local land-use regulations in the state’s housing crisis
The first (and probably only) debate in the California governor’s race happened earlier this week between Democratic nominee Gavin Newsom and Republican nominee John Cox. Appropriately enough both candidates were asked how they were going to address the state’s housing crisis. Newsom’s response was an ambitious target of 500,000 new homes/year through 2025 (far higher than current levels) through subsidies, and changing the incentives for local governments to z...
CONTINUE READINGThe Elephant In The Atmosphere
The IPCC’s report rings alarm bells on climate change.
As many major news outlets have reported, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (“IPCC”) released a special report last Saturday detailing the harmful effects of global warming at 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. This new threshold number is significant. The Paris Agreement on climate change aims to limit global warming to 2 degrees Celsius, but at the behest of small island nations fearing the consequences of climate change-induc...
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