Requiem for a Bottom-Feeder
UCLA's Don Shoup Has Transformed Urban Planning
Every scholar wants to do good, productive, important work, but I suppose all us secretly would like to redefine our fields -- to go down in academic history, so to speak. Virtually none of us do. But UCLA's Don Shoup, who is retiring this year from the Urban Planning department, is one who has. And he has done so in an area that no one would have expected: parking policy. Shoup's key insight has been that urban form has been grotesquely distorted by the requirement f...
CONTINUE READINGIs Jeb Too Green?
GOP Primary voters may think so.
At this point, the GOP Presidential field looks like Jeb Bush versus Everyone Else. (Of course, there's a big fight over who get's to play Everyone Else when this particular play opens in Iowa and New Hampshire.) It's an open question whether Jeb will turn out to be too green for the average GOP primary voter. Jeb has already been attacked by the Club for Growth on this basis. The Club's communication director complains that "we did see hundreds of millions in...
CONTINUE READINGThe Climate Rides Again
Support the Emmett Institute in the California Coast Climate Ride!
Regular readers may remember Ted Parson’s Legal Planet post about his experience on last year’s NYC-DC Climate Ride. Ted described the ride as “beautiful, hard, and moving.” (Pun possibly intended.) Along with fellow riders Andy Sabin and Dan Emmett, Ted raised a ton of money for our program and brought attention to the work of the Emmett Institute and other excellent groups working on climate change issues. On May 17, the Climate Ride will be coming to Cali...
CONTINUE READINGCalifornia Sets 2030 Climate Emissions Target
And it looks like the right goal
Today, California Governor Jerry Brown signed an executive order setting a statewide greenhouse gas emissions target to be achieved by 2030, at 40% below 1990 levels. It's an historic announcement that puts California in the vanguard of jurisdictions who have committed to goals in this 2030 timeframe (it matches the E.U.'s). California's new 2030 target takes its place alongside, and fits nicely with, the state's existing 2020 and 2050 goals, which were set, respec...
CONTINUE READINGClimate Fatigue
You might be tired of climate change. But climate change isn't tired of you.
I gather that people are tired of hearing about climate change. I'm tired of hearing about climate change, too. Sadly, Nature just doesn't care that much about entertaining us. It's going to be climate change this year, climate change next year, climate change the year after that . . . But don't worry, it won't be as boring as it sounds. To begin with, although the global trends are reasonably predictable, there's more uncertainty about exactly how things wi...
CONTINUE READINGCulture Wars at the Supreme Court
A new book examines the roots of judicial conflict in environmental law.
Views on environmental issues are related to broader culture differences. According to social scientists, environmentalists tend to be egalitarian, believe in harmony with nature, and stress responsibility over autonomy. Their opponents, who are skeptical about regulation, tend to favor traditional hierarchies, believe in human mastery of nature, and stress autonomy over responsibility. Jon Cannon's new book, Environment in the Balance, extends this theory to the S...
CONTINUE READINGIs Jeb Bush Listening to Andy Sabin?
Position on Climate Change Evolving
Jeb Bush is now "concerned" about climate change. He also believes the U.S. needs to work with other countries to "negotiate a way to reduce carbon emissions." Though some environmental groups remain skeptical --largely because Bush also embraced natural gas as the primary tool to reduce U.S. emissions -- these statements strike me as worthy of praise. Most (though not all) of the Republican contenders for President are either outright den...
CONTINUE READINGThe Battle to Restore Hetch Hetchy Valley Moves to the Courts
New Lawsuit Claims Dam and Reservoir in Yosemite National Park Violate California Constitution
This week, the longstanding battle over the dam and reservoir that have for a century flooded Yosemite National Park's storied Hetch Hetchy Valley moves to the courts. A new lawsuit, filed by conservationists on the 177th anniversary of John Muir's birth, asserts that the City of San Francisco's continued operation of O'Shaughnessy Dam and Hetch Hetchy Reservoir on the Tuolumne River within the Park violates Article X, section 2 of the California Constitution....
CONTINUE READINGCarbon Vouchers: A Small-Government Approach to Climate Action
How to limit climate change without giving the Feds enforcement powers or revenue.
What I’m going to sketch here isn’t a zero government approach. But the government’s role is very limited: federal agencies don’t do any enforcement and the government doesn’t touch any revenue from the scheme. So this approach deals with the concern that a carbon tax or something similar would either expand EPA’s ability to abuse its enforcement powers, micromanage businesses, or bloat government revenues. The core of the scheme is that ordinary individua...
CONTINUE READINGSwinging Between Optimism and Pessimism on Climate Change
good news, bad news
Every day seems to bring new news about climate change, some of it encouraging and some of it so disheartening that doomsday feels around the corner. Here's a catalogue of recent climate news, starting with the optimistic stories: Bloomberg news reports that the end of fossil fuels is in sight. The World Bank today announced a major agreement -- signed onto by the world's top oil producing countries -- to stop natural gas flaring by 2030. Global emissions flat...
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