Coastal Communities Demand EPA Update Decades-Old Oil Spill Regulations
Written in Collaboration with Camila Gonzalez*
Coastal communities are bracing themselves. Thirty years after the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska, and almost nine years after the BP Deepwater Horizon rig explosion in the Gulf of Mexico, they are facing the threat of another catastrophic oil spill. The Trump Administration is paving the way. The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management will soon release its five-year outer continental shelf oil and gas leasing plan, reversing Obama-era policies and reopening ninety p...
CONTINUE READINGGuest Blogger Stephanie Oehler: California Legislators Propose Framework to Radically Reduce Plastic Waste
Senate Bill 54 would phase out non-recyclable plastics and require more source reduction and recycling by 2030
California may soon pass new legislation that would tackle a major contributing factor to global plastic pollution – single-use plastic packaging and products. While experts continue to push for comprehensive federal legislation on plastic waste, California’s actions could have widespread benefits. State residents consume large quantities of plastics and California is often an early adopter of environmental policies that other states and jurisdictions may later f...
CONTINUE READINGDowngrading OIRA
The acting regulatory "czar" is the least experienced in history.
Overlooked amidst all the other news, the White House picked a new acting regulatory czar earlier this month. The acting Director of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs is Paul Ray, who is very junior and a virtual unknown. It's difficult to imagine that he's going to be very effective at telling cabinet officials or other agency heads that they need to fix their proposed regulatory actions. That's a tough thing to do anyway, especially for a person with...
CONTINUE READINGFormer California Insurance Commissioner Dave Jones Joins CLEE to Work on Financial Risk from Climate Change
Register for Wednesday 10am webinar to welcome Jones and discuss new CLEE insurance policy brief
Commissioner Dave Jones just concluded two successful terms leading the California Department of Insurance, where he distinguished himself as a pioneer in efforts to address the risks that climate change poses to the insurance sector. The Center for Law, Energy and the Environment (CLEE) is now pleased to welcome him to our team, where he plans to expand on this groundbreaking work. In addition to his position with CLEE, Jones has also been appointed a Distinguished Fell...
CONTINUE READINGMore States Are Finally Following California’s RPS Lead
California has long led the push for renewable energy mandates, and others are catching on
California’s renewables portfolio standard (RPS) is a flagship component of the state’s robust portfolio of climate change policies. The RPS is complex, but the basic concept is simple: state law requires electric utilities to procure a minimum percentage of their retail electricity from qualifying renewable sources under rules set by the California Public Utilities Commission. California has successfully employed the policy for over 15 years, and last fall set a new...
CONTINUE READINGWhat Do We Know About Environmental Justice?
Not As Much As We Should
If you are not a regular reader of the Journal of Economic Perspectives, you should be. Most economists fetishize what my friend and colleague Steve Bainbridge refers to accurately as “recreational mathematics.” But often, these models add more heat than light, and in any event, function as a private language. Fortunately enough, JEP’s magician-editor Timothy Taylor is the world’s finest translator of economics into English, producing a remarkable journal of h...
CONTINUE READINGEPA’s Mission: The Original Understanding
Guess what? EPA's core mission wasn’t cutting regulatory costs.
What is EPA’s mission? To what extent is minimizing regulatory costs part of the core mission, as the Trump Administration seems to believe? Does the Trump/Pruitt/Wheeler view comport with original intent? History makes it clear that the answer is no. The title of the agency itself suggests that the core mission is protecting the environment, just as the core mission of the Defense Department is presumably national defense (though cost isn’t irrelevant in either...
CONTINUE READINGI Suppose We Can Just Hope That EIA Is Wrong
The federal estimate of energy-related carbon emissions in 2050 should get our attention.
The U.S. Department of Energy’s Energy Information Administration (EIA) issues projections for future energy use across all sectors of society. They aren’t really predictions of our energy future -- they are more like conversation starters. In fact, some researchers suggest that EIA shows a consistent bias by forecasting more energy use than actually occurs. Yet, EIA’s stock-in-trade is to estimate what might happen tomorrow if rules and policies stay as they ar...
CONTINUE READINGGovernance on the Ground—Evaluating Pesticide Regulation in California
In a new study, UCLA and USC researchers find that California state and county officials are falling short in evaluating use of agricultural pesticides.
Editor's note: a new report from researchers at UCLA and USC provides a systematic review of California's county-level regulation of pesticides. Read the report, a 4-page summary, and a press release. It is well known that the law on the ground often looks quite different than the law on the books. California’s pesticide regulatory program is a remarkable case in point. First, a bit of background about California’s program, which creates a two-tiered p...
CONTINUE READINGIf You’re Not At The Table, You’re On The Menu
Why Has Labor Attacked The Green New Deal?
One more entry in the "Not Helpful" Department: The AFL-CIO, the national arm for U.S. labor unions, offered a critical assessment of the Green New Deal, warning that the ambitious plan to combat climate change could adversely affect U.S. workers. In a letter last week to Sen. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), the lawmakers who introduced a resolution last month detailing the key components of their plan, members of ...
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