Guess Who Benefits From Regulating Power Plants
The answer will surprise you.
What parts of the country benefit most from the series of new EPA rules addressing pollution from coal-fired power plants? The answer is not what you think. EPA does a thorough cost-benefit analysis of its regulations but the costs and benefits are aggregated at the national level. In a new paper, David Spence and David Adelman from the University of Texas break down these figures on a regional basis. What they found may surprise you. In fact, the areas bene...
CONTINUE READINGDueling Laws and the Clean Power Plan
EPA has shifted its position toward more readily defensible ground.
One of the most serious legal challenges to EPA's Clean Power Plan -- and probably the only one that could completely derail it -- involves an exceptionally abstruse legal issue. When Congress tried to amend an obscure part of the Clean Air Act, someone screwed and two different versions were included in the final law. That wouldn't matter except this previously obscure provision is the legal basis for EPA's plan to regulate carbon emissions from existing power plants...
CONTINUE READINGAnd a Child Shall Sue Them: Ambitious New Climate Lawsuit Filed Against Obama Administration
Will This Litigation Be More Successful Than Earlier, Related "Atmospheric Trust" Lawsuits?
Late last week, attorneys representing children from around the nation filed a provocative new lawsuit in federal court, arguing that the Obama Administration is violating the children's constitutional rights by not taking far more dramatic steps to curb greenhouse gas emissions and address climate change concerns. The newly-filed complaint in the lawsuit, Juliana ex rel. Loznak v. United States of America, seeks a sweeping judicial order directing the federal g...
CONTINUE READINGCoal States File Premature Petition to Block Clean Power Plan
AGs Sue For Tactical and Political Reasons Even Though Their Legal Case is a Loser
Attorneys General from 15 states, led by West Virginia, filed a petition in federal court yesterday to block the Clean Power Plan (CPP) from going into effect. The filing seems to be more tactical and political than a serious legal claim: the Environmental Protection Agency has yet to publish the rule in the Federal Register and Section 307(b)(1) of the Clean Air Act authorizes judicial review only "within sixty days from the date" a rule "appears in the Federal ...
CONTINUE READINGU.C. Campuses Top Sierra Club’s “Cool Schools” Rankings
U.C. Irvine, U.C. Davis Rank 1 & 2 as Nation's Greenest University Campuses
The Sierra Club has released its latest rankings of the "greenest" colleges and universities in the United States, titled "Cool Schools 2015." The University of California fares extremely well in that survey, with four of its campuses placing in the top 10 of the Sierra Club poll. U.C. Irvine nabbed the top spot in the rankings, while U.C. Davis placed second. U.C. San Diego secured the seventh position in the survey, U.C. Berkeley tenth. The rankings are publish...
CONTINUE READINGPolitics v. Legality and the Clean Power Plan
EPA's Final Plan Changes State Targets, With New Winners and Losers
When the President released the final version of the Clean Power Plan last week, it contained a number of big alterations to the draft plan. One of the most significant changes was the way each state's greenhouse gas emissions target was calculated. The bottom line is that -- generally -- states more heavily reliant on coal fired power plants will have to make bigger cuts than they would have had to make under the proposed plan while states that are already relativ...
CONTINUE READINGCA Supreme Court Rejects California State University’s CEQA Dodge–Again
Justices Hold CSU Can't Pass the Buck re: Environmental Mitigation Measures Tied to Campus Expansion
In an important decision issued last week, the California Supreme Court forcefully rejected the California State University's efforts to avoid paying for mitigation measures needed to offset the adverse environmental impacts associated with CSU's ambitious expansion plans. That's welcome if predictable news from a court that has in recent years been protective of the state's bedrock environmental protection law, the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). ...
CONTINUE READINGWhat the Market Is Telling Us About Coal
Dump your coal stocks while you still can!
The market's message is simple: coal's day is ending. Three major coal companies (Alpha Natural Resources, Walter Energy, and Patriot Coal) have gone into bankruptcy. The two largest publicly traded companies (Peabody and Arch) are now trading for a dollar a share, down from $16 and $33 within the past year. They, too, may well face bankruptcy. This doesn't mean that production is going to end, though current shareholders are likely to get wiped out and the creditors...
CONTINUE READINGWhy legal challenges to the EPA Clean Power Plan will end up at the Supreme Court
Cross-posted from The Conversation. Even before President Obama announced the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Clean Power Plan on August 3 to regulate carbon emissions from power plants, there were a number of legal challenges to block the law at its proposal stage – none of them successful. Earlier this year, the DC Circuit Court told opponents, which included a coal company joined by 12 states, that their arguments were premature. Now that the rules a...
CONTINUE READINGGlobal Warming and Changing Weather
Why DOESN'T global warming just raise the temperature everywhere a little bit?
The amount of global warming that scientists are predicting doesn't seem like that big a deal -- maybe about 4 degrees Fahrenheit if we control emissions, up to maybe 12 if we don't. But as I've said a hundred times -- and the experts have said a lot more often than that -- we won't get just a general average heat increase everywhere. Instead, we're going to get a lot of shifts in weather and a lot more extreme weather. Why? One answer to that question is: becau...
CONTINUE READING