Wetlands, WOTUS and California
California Regulators Can and Should Adopt Strong State Wetlands Protection Rules
For the past year, an overriding concern of many Californians has been whether and how state legislators and regulators can fill the environmental law and policy gap left by a Trump Administration that is in the process of reversing a host of Obama-era environmental rules and that has otherwise largely abandoned the field of environmental protection. In some areas--like forestalling renewed federal interest in offshore oil and gas development and proposed reductions to...
CONTINUE READINGThe Top 10 Things to Be Thankful For (Environmental Version)
It hasn't been a good year, to say the least. But there are some things to be thankful for.
Overall, it's been a pretty lousy year since last Thanksgiving. If you care about the environment, there are a lot of things NOT to be thankful for, or rather one big thing in the form of He Who Must Not Be Named. But there are also some things for which we should feel thankful, many of them involving resistance to You Know Who. Here's a top 10 list: 10. Nicaragua and Syria have joined the Paris Agreement, leaving the U.S. as the only outlier. 9. Some countr...
CONTINUE READINGPineapples and Preparing for the Future at COP23
Guest post by Eric Sezgen, UCLA Law student
As Alex’s previous blogpost states, there was a sense of urgency at this COP. Urgency had observable consequences all around the conference and was not only embraced but enhanced by Fiji’s presidency. You could see this even in the COP’s logo. Whereas the COP logo is usually a sleek and trendy design to look good on banners and t-shirts, Fiji’s logo, though seemingly innocuous, is emblematic of the true stakes of negotiations coming out of the COP. The logo i...
CONTINUE READINGOf Dreamliners and Drinking Water
Michael Kiparsky and Christian Binz
As we have written previously, potable water reuse (recycling water to augment water supplies) is a promising way to diversify urban water supply portfolios. Direct potable water reuse (DPR), the injection of highly purified wastewater into drinking water systems, is among the newest, and most controversial, methods for augmenting water supplies. DPR is garnering increasing interest, but does not come without risks. In a new article, several of us examine the notio...
CONTINUE READING‘Let the Sunshine In’: The Fight for Solar in the Tar Heel State
Despite utility opposition and conservative state legislature, the law is slowly shifting toward solar energy.
In North Carolina, renewable energy is more a distant dream than a reality. The state has a modest renewable portfolio standard (10-12% by 2018 or 2021, depending on the utility). Right now, the state is at only about 7%, with the remainder split more or less equally between coal, gas and nuclear. It has old-fashioned utility regulation, with Duke Power as the main power supplier. Duke’s goal, of course, is to protect its monopoly position in its service area and the r...
CONTINUE READINGPublic Lands Watch: National Park Fee Increases
Park Service proposes to more than double fees at popular parks for peak times
On October 24, the National Park Service published a proposal to hike entrance fees in 17 of the most popular parks—including Yellowstone, Yosemite, and the Grand Canyon—during peak visitation seasons. The per-vehicle fee during peak season would rise to $70 from the current range of $25 to $30. The plan would also raise the per-person and motorcycle fees during peak seasons, and raise annual-pass fees. The fee hikes would help pay for deferred maintenance in the par...
CONTINUE READINGEnvironmental Law Professors File Amicus Brief in Defense of Technology-Forcing in the California Supreme Court
Professors oppose efforts to limit the Legislature’s authority to enact laws protecting the public health and safety of CA residents
My colleague Sean Hecht and I, along with eleven other California environmental law professors, filed an amicus brief in the California Supreme Court this week in support of the California Legislature’s authority to enact technology-forcing statutes. The underlying case, National Shooting Sports Foundation, Inc., et al. v. State of California, involves a gun control law passed by the Legislature in 2007 requiring the use of a developing technology called “mi...
CONTINUE READINGSeeking Salvation at the COP
Guest post by Sunjana Supekar, UCLA Law student
“You have to act as if it were possible to radically transform the world. And you have to do it all the time.” These words, attributed to famed anti-racist activist Angela Davis, permeated my thoughts as I walked through the halls of the 2017 UN Climate Change Conference in Bonn, Germany (referred to as the “COP,” for conference of parties). The major question for this year’s COP was how exactly to implement the terms of the Paris Agreement....
CONTINUE READINGESA Under Attack. Again.
The Washington Post tomorrow is running an Op Ed written with Peter Alagona, a colleague in environmental studies at UCSB. We were approached by the Post and asked to write a piece addressing the current raft of bills that seek to weaken the Endangered Species Act and sharing our views about alternatives. With a tight limit of 700 words, we could not go into much detail but hope you find informative our assessment of the current legislation and promising future paths. ...
CONTINUE READINGThe Growing Schism Between Coal and Oil
They're both fossil fuels, but their producers don't always have the same policy views.
Bush's environmental policies were bad, but Trump's policies are way worse. One reason is that Bush and Cheney were oilman, and Trump is obsessed with coal. Yes, oil and coal are both fossil fuels, but they have different economics and different policy stances. These are two very different industries. The U.S. coal companies are in desperate economic straits; while the net annual income of major oil companies is measured in the tens of billions. Both stand to be har...
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