Some Good News About the El Segundo Chevron Explosion
The Drain is a weekly roundup of environmental and climate news from Legal Planet.
When the state’s second-largest refinery emitted a fireball into the heavens last week, it was bad. But it wasn’t all bad. The “incident” at the Chevron refinery in El Segundo was a good reminder that air pollution is present during the entire life cycle of oil and gas products, from when it comes out of the ground to when it combusts. And sometimes when it explodes near local communities. For months, the conversation around California’s oil production h...
CONTINUE READINGFirst Monday? More Like ‘First Moanday.’
Since conservatives got a supermajority on the Supreme Court, it’s been on an anti-environmental tear.
As Court watchers know, the first Monday in October is the first day of the Supreme Court term. If you believe in federal protection of the environment, however, the start of a new term isn’t exactly grounds for rejoicing. The more natural reaction is a moan. About the best you can hope is that the Court won’t wreak too much damage on environmental law. Luckily, at this point, the Court doesn’t have any significant environmental cases on its agenda. In the l...
CONTINUE READINGGarbage In, Garbage Out, Garbage Everywhere
The collapse of international plastics negotiations demands a new, non-UN framework
Given all the garbage that we have to deal with nowadays, you might have missed the prospect of actual, non-metaphorical garbage this week: to virtually no one’s surprise, UN negotiations over an international plastics treaty collapsed this week. It’s easy to make jokes referencing The Graduate – and in fact I will - but this is no laughing matter. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development estimates that, without global action to curb plastic pol...
CONTINUE READINGCreating an Anti-Rollback Playbook
The Administration has a favored toolset for justifying its rollbacks. We need to perfect the counterarguments.
Environmentalists need to develop some broad strategies to combat Trump rollbacks, least they become mired in an overwhelming number of details. The Trump Administration seemingly has a million rollbacks going but they rely on a relatively small numbers of strategies. The task will be developing effective counters to these strategies. The responses can then be fine-tuned for application to specific rollbacks. Below, I set out some of the core Trump strategies and discuss...
CONTINUE READINGAt a Loss for Words? Resist Climate Silence
The Drain is a weekly roundup of environmental and climate news from Legal Planet.
A few years ago, I was writing about how President Joe Biden was flying around the country to promote his landmark climate law without uttering the word “climate.” Seems so quaint. Now, we find ourselves in a place where “climate change” is on a list of banned words maintained by the U.S. Energy Department, along with adjectives like “green” and "clean," and nouns like “emissions,” “sustainability,” ‘footprint,’” and “tax breaks, tax credi...
CONTINUE READINGNEPA Update: The Other Shoe Drops
A New D.C. Circuit Case reads the Seven County decision for all it is worth.
In a new decision, Tennessee Pipeline v. FERC, the D.C. Circuit has taken a hatchet to judicial review of environmental impact statements. The opinion by (the court’s most activist conservative gave the broadest possible reading to a recent Supreme Court ruling, the Seven County Infrastructure case. In doing so, the court ignored earlier NEPA precedent that the Seven County did not overrule, and recent administrative law rulings. In Seven County the Supreme Court he...
CONTINUE READINGWebinar: Climate Policy without the Endangerment Finding
UCLA Law's "Up in the Air" webinar explores the future of federal and state climate policy if the endangerment finding is repealed.
As Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin rushes to rescind the endangerment finding — which some have called “the Holy Grail of U.S. climate policy" — the UCLA Emmett Institute hosted an expert panel discussion on the reasoning and ramifications of such a move. The effort underlines “an extraordinarily dark time in U.S. environmental politics,” UCLA Law Professor Ann Carlson said during the webinar. "But all is not lost," she added. ...
CONTINUE READINGOne Easy Fix to Prepare for the Next Big Disaster
A little-known drafting wrinkle in current state law is impeding local governments from springing into action after disasters.
Along with my fellow Angelenos, this year I’ve had a front-row seat to the challenges of regional recovery from a major disaster event. The January 2025 Eaton and Palisades wildfires devastated LA-area communities, including two—the Palisades and Altadena—locally renowned for their distinctive neighborhood feel. In the aftermath, the response highlighted challenges at every level of government, from concerns about the adequacy of federal cleanup efforts to loca...
CONTINUE READINGAfter Trump: Recreating Agencies From the Ground Up
A Game Plan for 2029
A new President who wanted a major course-correction away from Trumpism would immediately be faced with a huge problem: Trump will be leaving the apparatus of government in shambles. Much of the government’s top echelon – the most experienced and expert public servants — will have been forced out or will have fled the government voluntarily. The lower ranks will be depleted and demoralized. Rebuilding is a longer-term project, but a new President can’t afford to ...
CONTINUE READINGWhere Should EV Chargers Go?
California set an infrastructure milestone - but how can it reach ambitious goals for EV drivers?
As the California Energy Commission proudly announced this week, the state is now home to over 200,000 publicly accessible electric vehicle chargers. This milestone is worth celebrating, both in absolute and relative terms: California has far more individual public charging ports than gasoline nozzles, and with around 2 million EVs now on the road, around one public port for every ten vehicles. With many EV drivers regularly charging at one of the estimated 800,000 home ...
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