Breaking News: California Supreme Court Refuses To Hear Appeal On Industry Challenge To Cap-And-Trade Auction
Industry once again loses leverage over shaping the program post 2020
The California Chamber of Commerce has just lost its case against the state's cap-and-trade auction, with the news from the Los Angeles Times that the California Supreme Court has refused to hear an appeal from the state appellate court. This means the auction mechanism in the cap-and-trade program is valid at least through 2020. As we've covered on this blog before (most recently with Ann's post from last fall, which links to our other posts), industry plaintiffs had...
CONTINUE READINGFrance Pushes for Global Pact on the Environment
President Macron, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and others support proposal for global environmental treaty
In Paris this past Saturday, a high-level group of legal experts endorsed a new proposal for a worldwide environmental treaty: the Global Pact on the Environment. President Emmanuel Macron of France gave the concluding speech at a launch event for the Pact (text and video in French); other speakers included former UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, Laurent Fabius (Chair of the Paris UNFCCC COP in 2015), Mayor Anne Hidalgo of Paris, Former UN Special Envoy on Climate Cha...
CONTINUE READINGProfessor William Boyd Joins UCLA Faculty
Leading Energy and Environmental Law Scholar Will Bring Key Expertise to Emmett Institute
We are very excited to announce that Professor William Boyd of the University of Colorado Law School is joining the UCLA Law faculty effective July 1, 2018. He will hold a joint appointment with the UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability. Professor Boyd is one of the nation's leading scholars of energy and environmental law. He has written pathbreaking articles on public utilities, their historical origins and the role they play in contemporary climate a...
CONTINUE READINGA Stealth Attack on Public Health
No, this isn't about the health care bill.
The Trump Administration has embarked on a campaign of postponing pollution regulations that protect the public health. Even if these are only temporary delays, rather than steps toward permanently weakening health protections, the delays are not innocuous. To put it as bluntly as possible, Americans will die as a result of these delays. For instance, the delay in implementing new air quality standards will directly impact public health. Scott Pruitt announced at the...
CONTINUE READINGFencelines
The Supreme Court rules on how to define a parcel of property under the Constitution
The Supreme Court ruled today on Murr v. Wisconsin, a takings case that could have potentially had a major effect on land use regulation. The Supreme Court has ruled that a "taking" of private property exists if the state prohibits all economically beneficial use of property. Naturally, lawyers have gleefully litigated the question of how to define what constitutes a parcel of property. Property right advocates have pushed hard to make the definition narrow, so th...
CONTINUE READINGAfter Trump
Some day the Trump/Ryan/Pruitt era will end. We need to be ready to move forward.
Fighting the Trump/Ryan/Pruitt assault on environmental protection necessarily absorbs a huge amount of our energy. But eventually, the current conservative stranglehold on the national government will come to an end. Sooner or later, the government will once again come into more environmentally friendly hands. When that happens, we need to have practical, detailed proposals ready to go. Some of these plans must involve administrative action like the Obama Administrat...
CONTINUE READINGThe Truth About Environmental Originalism
Scott Pruitt advocates environmental originalism. It means the direct opposite of what he thinks.
Scott Pruitt has taken to talking about environmental originalism – going back to the original intent of our environmental laws. But he’s got the original intent completely backwards. The statutes weren’t intended to protect jobs or grow the economy. They were intended to protect the environment, with cost at best a secondary consideration. This is exactly why economists have long criticized our environmental statutes. Obama has been constantly attacked by cons...
CONTINUE READINGWhen Trump’s Name is Forgotten, His Carbon Will Remain
Much of the carbon from his policies will remain in the atmosphere for centuries.
Given Trump's desire to increase the use of fossil fuels, it's no surprise that his presidency will result in increased carbon emissions. Some of the carbon will remain in the atmosphere for centuries, an enduring monument to his presidency and his rejection of scientific facts. Before the election, I took a stab at estimating that impact, based on EPA's projections in the Clean Power Plan: One of Trump’s pledges is to eliminate Obama’s Clean Power Plan. Th...
CONTINUE READINGPublic Lands Watch: BLM Methane Rule
BLM delays compliance date for certain provisions of the rule
As we reported earlier, the Obama Administration promulgated a regulation restricting the emissions of methane from oil and gas operations on federal public lands. Efforts to use the Congressional Review Act to overturn that regulation failed last month. Now the Interior Department is delaying compliance with certain provisions of the rule indefinitely, citing pending litigation over the rule. (The specific provision is The Federal Register notice with the proposal...
CONTINUE READINGTrump Administration Seeks Ninth Circuit Review in Pioneering “Atmospheric Trust” Case
U.S. District Judge Has Denied Government's Effort to Dismiss Cutting-Edge Public Trust/Climate Change Case
Back in August 2015, I blogged on a then newly-filed federal lawsuit in which a coalition of children and their legal guardians sued the federal government to challenge the government's proposed approval of a controversial liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal proposed to be located on the Oregon coast. That lawsuit contends that approval of the project would incrementally increase the nation's greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and--more dramatically--that the childr...
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