The Disagreeable Mr. Pruitt
The list of his six worst traits starts with paranoia and ends with unbounded ambition.
I’m sure that Scott Pruitt has his good side. Probably he loves dogs. But his bad traits are, well, pretty hard to overlook. Here are some of the main characteristics of the man who is now charged by statute with protecting our environment: Paranoia. As Grist says, “in just his first year, he has reportedly expanded his around-the-clock security detail at a cost of at least $2 million annually. He spent $25,000 on a secure phone booth inside his office.” And h...
CONTINUE READINGCLEE Launches California Climate Policy Dashboard
New resource offers snapshot of state’s climate laws, programs, and regulators
The Center for Law, Energy and the Environment (CLEE) at UC Berkeley School of Law has launched the California Climate Policy Dashboard, a new web resource offering an overview of the key laws, programs and agencies driving California’s pioneering effort to tackle climate change, including: The landmark greenhouse gas emission reduction laws, AB 32 and SB 32, which call for a 40% reduction below 1990 levels by 2030; Key programs such as the cap-and-trade system...
CONTINUE READINGContentious California Beach Access Case Heads to U.S. Supreme Court
Longstanding Martins Beach Controversy May Well Capture Justices' Attention
The U.S. Supreme Court's 2018-19 Term is already shaping up as a big one for environmental law in general and the longstanding tension between private property rights and environmental regulation in particular. The Court has already agreed to hear and decide two cases next Term raising the latter set of issues: one involves the question of how extensively federal regulators can limit development of private property that's deemed by government to be "critical habitat" f...
CONTINUE READINGGlobal market for ecosystem services surges to $36 billion in annual transactions
New article in Nature Sustainability tracks global payments for ecosystems services
In the early 1990s, New York City began paying for land management in the Catskills watershed to ensure safe drinking water for the city, avoiding the cost of building an expensive water treatment plant. New York City provides just one example of a growing number of programs – called payments for ecosystem services (PES) - where users who benefit from clean water, habitat conservation, flood protection and other services from ecosystems pay for land management practice...
CONTINUE READINGGoing Private
A new book argues that businesses and individuals can take the lead in reducing emissions.
Beyond Politics: The Private Governance Response to Climate Change, by Michael Vandenbergh and Jonathan Gilligan, is an ambitious effort to demonstrate the promise of non-governmental efforts to reduce emissions. They argue it is a mistake to pin all our hopes to one climate strategy like a national cap-and-trade system. For this reason, they argue that we should look beyond politics to the private sector – both companies and individuals -- for help. Vandenbergh and...
CONTINUE READINGGuest Blogger Ken Alex: Political Will to Address Greenhouse Gas Emissions
Post #9 in a Series on California Climate Policy by Ken Alex, Senior Policy Advisor to Gov. Jerry Brown
[This is the ninth post in a series expressing my view of why California’s actions on climate change are so important and how they will change the world. The introductory post provides an overview and some general context.] I said at the outset of these blog posts that political will and the issue of scale are bigger hurdles to our GHG reduction goals than technology and finance. I do not discount the technological and financial challenges, but we can already se...
CONTINUE READINGRed-State Utilities Go Green
Utilities are moving away from coal & toward renewables, even in GOP states.
Even in Republican states, there has been a regulatory movement to expand the use of renewables. (see this report for more.) Perhaps even more surprisingly, some utilities and generating companies that now use a lot of coal are voluntarily turning to renewables. Here are some recent examples: Ohio. In February, AEP explained that “Our customers want us to partner with them to provide cleaner energy and new technologies, while continuing to provide reliable, affordab...
CONTINUE READINGSupreme Court to Decide Another Major Property Rights Case
The U.S. Supreme Court's 2018-19 Term is shaping up as a most consequential one when it comes to the intersection of environmental regulation and constitutionally-protected property rights. Today the Court agreed to hear and decide an important "regulatory takings" case: Knick v. Township of Scott, Pennsylvania, No. 17-647. (Recently, Legal Planet colleague Holly Doremus wrote about another important environmental case the justices have agreed to resolve, one involving t...
CONTINUE READINGGuest Blogger Ken Alex: Reducing Emissions is Not Enough
Post #8 in a Series on California Climate Policy by Ken Alex, Senior Policy Advisor to Gov. Jerry Brown
[This is the eighth post in a series expressing my view of why California’s actions on climate change are so important and how they will change the world. The introductory post provides an overview and some general context.] Under the Paris Agreement, countries agreed to hold the increase in the global average temperature to “well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels and pursuing efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.�...
CONTINUE READINGNov. 2018: Senate Races
The odds are that the Republicans will continue to control the Senate in 2018. The electoral map is very unfavorable to the Democrats, with many vulnerable Democrats up for reelection and only two such Republicans. But even if the GOP keeps control, their victory margin matters. It will determine how much maneuvering room that McConnell has to work with (currently only a single vote). The margin will also set the stage for the 2020 elections, when the Democrats face a mo...
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