National Monuments: a Rebuttal to Commentators who Support Trump’s Actions to Undo Public Lands Protections
This post is co-authored with Sean Hecht. For the past three months, Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke has been reviewing some of the national monuments designated under the Antiquities Act by Presidents Obama, Bush, and Clinton. Since the end of last year, we and others at Legal Planet have been writing on the scope of presidential authority with regard to national monuments, frequently in response to commentators who have argued that President Trump can legally e...
CONTINUE READINGRick Perry At the Helm of the Department of . . . What Was That One Again?
Compared to other members of the Trump Administration, he's actually not that bad.
Expectations for Perry were about as low as you can get. He advocated closing the Department of Energy but then forgot the name during a televised debate. He was appointed by Trump, whose fondness for fossil fuels knows no limits, and at the time Perry was selected had little idea of what DOE actually does. He’s also from Texas, where oil is king. But actually, he’s caused relatively little harm. Michael Lewis has written a recent piece about DOE describing Perry a...
CONTINUE READINGCalifornia Supreme Court Issues Split Decision in CEQA Preemption Case
Justices Find CEQA's Application to Public Railroad Projects Not Fully Preempted
The California Supreme Court has ruled in an important case that the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) is not fully preempted when it comes to publicly-owned railroad projects in the Golden State. Friends of the Eel River v. North Coast Railroad Authority. In that decision, the justices forged a middle ground between the more extreme arguments advanced by the litigants-- producing a judicial compromise that is unlikely to satisfy fully either side. The Fr...
CONTINUE READINGObsolete Arguments Against Climate Action
Conservatives keep repeating the same arguments, even though the world has changed.
There used to be some fairly plausible arguments against fighting climate change. I don’t mean crackpot theories about hoaxes or the “I’m not a scientist” hokum. Instead, the arguments I have in mind could be made with a straight face by serious people. I don’t think these arguments were ever truly persuasive, but they weren’t nuts.You still hear a lot of these arguments today, often from conservatives claiming to take more nuanced positions on climate change...
CONTINUE READINGIndustry’s Hostile Takeover of EPA
When you're Scott Pruitt, who you gonna call? Industry reps.
When there are hard decisions to make, who does EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt turns to? Not, as you might naively think, the experts on the staff of his own agency. Instead, he turns to industry lobbyists and lawyers, and to politicians like the Republican state attorneys general who used to be his colleagues. As the NY Times documented, Pruitt “has outsourced crucial work to a network of lawyers, lobbyists, and other allies, especially Republican state attorneys gene...
CONTINUE READINGGuest Blogger Gregory Dotson: Is Scott Pruitt Calling for an Amendment to the Clean Air Act?
EPA Administrator Resorts to Misleading Rhetoric in Possible Prelude to Revisiting Massachusetts v. EPA
Since he was confirmed to lead the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency six months ago, Administrator Scott Pruitt has relied on three points when discussing the issue of climate change. He has cast doubt on the science by claiming it’s difficult to know the human role “with precision.” He has questioned the ability of the agency to act for lack of “the tools in the toolbox.” And he has claimed that there has been no legislative response to the landmark 2007 ca...
CONTINUE READINGThe Case of the Missing Philanthropy
In light of Trump's actions, foundations and donors need to step up.
If we learned nothing else from Trump’s disavowal of the Paris Agreement, it’s that we can’t count solely on the federal government to deal with the problem of climate change. It’s not a matter of whether we need state government or municipalities or corporations or non-profits – we need all of the above. But private philanthropy has fallen short. Don’t get me wrong. There are a lot of foundations with climate change programs – there’s a list of 40 of ...
CONTINUE READINGPublic Lands Watch: HR 2936
Resilient Federal Forests Act would reduce or eliminate environmental protections for logging projects on National Forests
The House Natural Resources Committee passed H.R. 2936, the “Resilient Federal Forests Act of 2017,” out of committee on June 27th and the bill is now waiting in the House for debate. The bill would expedite National Environment Policy Act (NEPA) review for U.S. Forest Service projects in order to improve forest management on federal and Tribal lands and reduce fire risks. It may also exempt a wide range of logging activities on the National Forests from the Endanger...
CONTINUE READINGEscalating the War on Science
Yesterday, the Washington Post ran a piece by a scientist who was helping villages in Alaska prepare for climate change, until the Trump Administration abruptly transferred him to an accounting job. Here's another sign of the Administration’s contempt for science: Pruitt’s idea for a televised debate on the reality of climate change between climate scientists and deniers. Why a TV debate? Because "There are lots of questions that have not been asked and answered,"a...
CONTINUE READINGCap-And-Trade Extension A Lifeline For High Speed Rail
Auction proceeds will continue to fund the train and other transit, housing and energy programs
As Cara posted, the California Legislature scored a super-majority victory last night to extend the state's signature cap-and-trade program through 2030. It was a rare bipartisan vote, although it leaned mostly on Democrats. Lost in the politics is what this means for high speed rail. The system has a fixed and dwindling amount of federal and state funds at this point, and it's relying on continued funding from the auction of allowances under cap-and-trade to build th...
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