Policy 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...
CONTINUE READING2019 California Water Law Symposium Set for February 2nd in San Francisco
This Year's Edition of the Award-Winning Event Focuses on Groundwater Management
The 15th Annual California Water Law Symposium will convene on Saturday, February 2, 2019. This year's Symposium venue is the UC Hastings College of the Law in downtown San Francisco. The theme of next month's Symposium is California groundwater, with a focus on implementation of the state's landmark 2014 legislation, the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (“SGMA”). The Water Law Symposium is a truly unique event: it is entirely organized and hosted b...
CONTINUE READINGGuest Blogger Gregory Dotson: Oregon May Join the Western Climate Initiative: What About Gasoline Prices?
Regardless of State Action, Surging Sales of Electric Vehicles Could Crash Gasoline Prices
Oregon is on the verge of taking historic action to establish an economy-wide cap and invest program and clean up the state’s carbon pollution. In doing so, Oregon could demonstrate how one state can do its part to avoid the worst effects of climate change. The concept dates back more than a decade, but the state legislature focused and got serious over the last few years, forming work groups to understand how the legislation might affect various interests of the state...
CONTINUE READINGUCLA Environmental Law Clinic and Surfrider Foundation to Brief Congress on Marine Plastic Pollution Crisis
The problem is big, but federal action could help.
Next week, I’ll be in Washington, D.C. with the Surfrider Foundation and two of our fabulous Frank G. Wells Environmental Law Clinic students, Charoula Melliou and Divya Rao, to brief Congress on harms caused by marine plastic pollution and steps the federal government can take to combat the problem. Plastic pollution is a serious issue, and one you may have seen in the news recently: just last week, a floating boom intended to rake up debris from the Great Pacific Ga...
CONTINUE READINGRegulatory Review in Anti-Regulatory Times: The Trump Administration
Cost-benefit analysis turns out to make very little difference when the issue is rolling back regulations.
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 first 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 the Executive Branch. In a new paper, I analyze the role of cost-benefit analysis and The Office of Informatio...
CONTINUE READINGNew CEQA SB 743 Transportation Guidelines Finally Finalized
Critical revisions will be discussed at March 1st Conference in Los Angeles -- register now!
It took five years, but California has finally ditched an outdated and counter-productive metric for evaluating transportation impacts under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). With the guidelines finalized on December 28th, a mere half-decade since the passage of SB 743 (Steinberg) in 2013, the state will ditch "auto delay" as a measure of project impacts and instead assess overall driving miles (VMT). You can see the new guidelines Section 15064.3. It's...
CONTINUE READINGJerry Brown’s Top Climate Accomplishments
Amazing successes, coupled with unfinished business
Today California inaugurates a new governor, Gavin Newsom, and says goodbye to four-term governor Jerry Brown. Governor Brown made climate change a central issue in his last two terms. Rick already offered an excellent assessment of the governor's overall environmental accomplishments, so here are (to my mind) his top achievements on the specific issue of climate change: Setting and signing clean energy goals: Some may take it for granted now, but when Governor Brow...
CONTINUE READINGWill There Be a Global Environmental Constitution?
The potential of a proposed Global Pact for the Environment remains uncertain
The 1990s were the heyday of international environmental lawmaking. The 1992 United Nations "Rio Conference" on Environment and Development catalyzed the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), Convention on Biological Diversity, and the UN Convention to Combat Desertification. The decade also witnessed the launch of the Rotterdam Convention on Prior Informed Consent as well as protocols such as the Madrid Protocol on Environmental Protection in Antar...
CONTINUE READINGThe Thin Gray Line
Few people understand the role that the bureaucracy plays in keeping us safe.
"Bureaucrat" is just another name for public servant. It has been said that a thin blue line of police protects us from the worst elements of society. But it is a thin gray line of underpaid, overworked, anonymous bureaucrats who protect society against more insidious risks -- risks ranging from nuclear contamination to climate change to unsafe food. Due to Trump's government shutdown, by the way, many of these people are currently not being paid. Yet without the profes...
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