Does the Future Have Standing?

Climate change may devastate future generations. Is there a way to get their interests before the courts?

Climate change is not just a long-range problem; it’s one that will get much worse in the future unless major emissions cuts are made.  For instance, sea levels will continue to rise for centuries. But the people who will be harmed by these changes can’t go to court: they haven’t been born yet. How can their interests be represented in court? And even people now alive who might still be around in, say, 2100, will have trouble proving any injury is “imminent,” ...

CONTINUE READING

Your Religion and Science Post of the Day

An Important Philosophical Argument

It's a fair point: ...

CONTINUE READING

LA’s Trying to Build Transit-Oriented Affordable Housing

But could we make it easier?

My colleague Jonathan Zasloff rightly points out that one way to harness the benefits of upzoning to alleviate our housing crisis is to promote inclusionary requirements for transit-oriented development.  Los Angeles has adopted just such a program through its Transit-Oriented Communities ordinance, which I’ve written about here. Per the City of Los Angeles’ initial assessment, the TOC Program appears to be on track to increasing the number of permitted affordabl...

CONTINUE READING

Yellow Light for YIMBYs: Upzoning Can Increase Housing Prices

New Research Indicates That Inclusionary Zoning Should Accompany Liberalization

Well, that's not what YIMBYs wanted. Yonah Freemark of MIT in the Urban Affairs Review: What are the local-level impacts of zoning change? I study recent Chicago upzonings that increased allowed densities and reduced parking requirements in a manner exogenous of development plans and neighborhood characteristics. To evaluate outcomes, I use difference-in-differences tests on property transaction prices and housing-unit construction permits. I detect significant, robust ...

CONTINUE READING

Bottoms-Up! An Emerging New Governance System (1)

In the past twenty years, climate policy has taken an unexpected form. Here's what to expect.

There’s been a major change in the way environmental governance works, which is most obvious in terms of climate policy. We initially expected climate policy to be set at the international level, followed by incorporation into national legislation, and implementation by agencies and lower levels of government like states.  But this top-down governance scheme isn’t the way things of worked out.  Instead, we have climate policy being made by nations, states, agencies...

CONTINUE READING

Flipping the Conservative Agenda

Thought experiment: take everything conservative want to do and then do the opposite.

Conservatives, with full support from Donald Trump have come up with a menu of ways to weaken the regulatory state. In honor of National Backward Day – that’s an actual thing, in case you’re wondering, and it’s today – let’s think about reversing those ideas.  In other words, let’s try to come up with similar mechanisms to strengthen protections for public health and the environment instead of weakening protections.  It’s an interesting experiment, if n...

CONTINUE READING

After Trump

Suppose we get a pro-climate-action unified government. What then?

Someday, the stars will surely come into alignment and Congress will be able to pass climate legislation.  A national cap-and-trade scheme or a carbon tax would be definite possibilities.  But let’s suppose they aren’t politically feasible, maybe because of opposition from progressive on equity grounds, or maybe because for some reason the public rejects them.  What are the other options?  Here are some thoughts: Existing ideas. Two ideas that are already on...

CONTINUE READING

Commemorating a Major Environmental Disaster–One With a Transformative Legacy

1969 Santa Barbara Oil Spill Sparked the Beginning of America's Modern Environmental Era

This week marks the 50th anniversary of one of the most serious and consequential environmental disasters in American history--the Santa Barbara offshore oil spill of 1969.  On January 28, 1969, an offshore oil rig (Platform A) owned and operated by the Union Oil Company and operating in federally-controlled waters in the Santa Barbara Channel off the California coast, blew out.  Over the next 10 days, between 80,000-100,000  barrels of crude oil spilled into the Chan...

CONTINUE READING

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 READING

Climate 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 READING

Join Our Mailing List

Climate policy is changing rapidly. Stay in the loop with expert analysis via email Monday - Friday.

TRENDING