The Other Half of Climate: Policy, Capital, and the Race to Scale Superpollutant Solutions
Learn how California is using satellite data to pull the emergency brake on global warming.
Methane and other short-lived climate pollutants (SLCPs) are responsible for nearly half of today’s net global warming. Because they exit the atmosphere quickly, reducing them can serve as an ‘emergency brake’ on rising temperatures. At the San Francisco Climate Week, UC Berkeley’s Center for Law, Energy and the Environment (CLEE) and the Institute for Governance & Sustainable Development (IGSD) brought together 80+ policymakers, scientists, technologists, an...
CONTINUE READINGTrump’s FEMA Review
Trump’s FEMA Council has reported back. Its basic strategy is flawed.
After much delay, Trump’s FEMA Council has reported back. While the report has some good ideas, much of it revolves around the same strategy: Move current problems from the federal government to the states rather than fixing them. Moving responsibilities around doesn’t make them go away. And the reality is that many states will be unable to manage these tasks efficiently. They lack the federal government’s capacity and economies of scale. And while the fe...
CONTINUE READINGIs BACA Constitutional?
Limitations on judicial review in the initiative might violate separation of powers
The California Chamber of Commerce initiative to rewrite the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) has strict limits on judicial review for challenges to agency decisions for projects covered by the initiative. Courts may only hear claims “limited to a public agency's non-compliance with objective existing laws, and the scope of the court's review shall be limited to whether the approval or authorization complies objective existing laws” [sic]. Proposed new...
CONTINUE READINGThe 2026 Election and the Environment
Trump will still be able to take a lot of anti-environmental actions. But not as many as today.
I published a post a week ago about prospects for the upcoming 2026 elections. I didn’t say much, however, about why the results will matter for the environment. No matter what happens electorally, Trump will still be in the White House and able to use executive powers to favor fossil fuels and bulldoze environmental protections. Nevertheless, the elections could still make a real difference in environmental terms. Even just taking the House would matter, but the...
CONTINUE READINGClimate Journalism is “Breaking but Not Broken”
The Drain is a weekly roundup of environmental and climate news from Legal Planet.
The 2026 Pulitzer Prize announcements happened this week and environmental reporting was in the mix though not central enough if you ask me. Here’s where it shined: The Breaking News Reporting category was dominated by journalism covering climate-fueled extreme weather. Finalists included staff of the Seattle Times for more than 100 stories covering catastrophic flooding in the Pacific Northwest — work that warned residents in real time and “explai...
CONTINUE READINGBuilding Bridges Over Troubled Waters
There are environmental issues that span the partisan divide, even today.
It turns out that the solar industry has two allies in unlikely places: Trump stalwarts Kellyanne Conway and Katie Miller (the wife of Stephen Miller). This is a reminder that, even in an era of hyper-partisanship, it is sometimes possible to create alliances across the ideological gulf.Despite polarization, there are some environmental issues that can bridge the partisan gap. T Some issues, like climate change, have become deeply polarizing. We shouldn’t give up on ...
CONTINUE READINGMethane, Exposed
Two new reports from the UCLA Emmett Institute reveal some of the largest methane sources in 2025.
One of the transformations in the climate policy world over the last few years has been the (rightful and helpful) rise in focus on methane pollution. For a long while, carbon dioxide was the attention-grabbing greenhouse gas, the one at which most policy initiatives were aimed. And CO2 remains critically important, of course. But folks have now realized that methane acts as the far more powerful driver of warming in the short- and mid-term, given its greater potency...
CONTINUE READINGBACA makes the ballot
Initiative to drastically change CEQA appears to have enough signatures to make ballot
It looks like the California Chamber of Commerce has enough signatures to put on the November ballot their initiative that would drastically change the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). Given that, I’m re-upping the analyses I did earlier this year on the measure: Part 1 (overview), Part 2 (sweeping scope of the initiative in terms of laws affected), Part 3 (broad vested rights created by the initiative), Part 4 (approval changes that apply to all Californ...
CONTINUE READINGThe 2026 Election: Six Months to Go
Here’s what things look like now, but a lot could change.
Because of polarization, environmental policy is closely tied to political party. It's sad, since these should be non-partisan issues, but it's a reality. With that in mind, I’ve been providing election information for about the past ten years. I don’t claim any special expertise in political forecasting. My assessments are based on two respected politics websites, Cook and Sabato. Given all that’s happening, the situation will surely shift in the six months, bu...
CONTINUE READINGReturn to Plessy v. Ferguson?
Photo by Clay Banks on Unsplash
DeFacto Discrimination at the Supreme Court
Time to say the quiet part out loud: Louisiana v. Callais is one of the most racist Supreme Court decisions since Plessy v. Ferguson. To borrow a concept from employment discrimination case law, Plessy is de jure discrimination, and Callais is de facto. In Plessy, the Supreme Court decided that separate schools and facilities were fine and dandy for blacks and whites because, despite overwhelming evidence (even in 1896) that facilities were not equal, the idea t...
CONTINUE READINGJoin Our Mailing List
Climate policy is changing rapidly. Stay in the loop with expert analysis via email Monday - Friday.
