The 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...
CONTINUE READINGHas EPA’s Proposed NSPS Expired?
Responding to claims that EPA must withdraw its proposed rules to control power-plant GHGs under CAA § 111
Challenges to EPA’s emergent program to regulate greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions under Clean Air Act section 111 continue to mount. Recently, the Attorneys General of 19 states sent a joint letter to EPA arguing that because EPA failed to finalize its proposed New Source Performance Standard (NSPS) for GHG emissions within one year—as the Clean Air Act requires—EPA must withdraw the proposed rule. Withdrawal of the NSPS proposal not only would delay stringent regula...
CONTINUE READINGYogi Berra Explains the Mono Lake Case
Or -- Timing Is Everything
As part of the book I am writing on the Mono Lake case, one question stands out: how was the Mono Lake Committee able to assemble the resources to bring a lawsuit against the powerful Los Angeles Department of Water and Power? At one level, the answer is obvious: it found a Sugar Daddy, in this case, the international law firm of Morrison & Foerster, which according to John Hart's fine book Storm Over Mono, agreed to contribute $250,000 of attorney time to th...
CONTINUE READINGClimate Gag Rules and the First Amendment
Are climate gag rules constitutional? Sometimes yes, sometimes no.
There have been recent reports about state agencies that forbid employees from discussing climate change. Since this is obviously a restriction on speech, it's natural to wonder what the First Amendment has to say on the subject. The answer depends in large part on the kind of employee speech at issue. Let's being with a ban on using the term "climate change" in official state communications. That seems to be clearly constitutional under present law, because th...
CONTINUE READINGThe Brazilian Deforestation Puzzle
Deforestation went down for a decade. Now it's going up. The reasons aren't clear.
Brazil’s rate of deforestation went down dramatically over the last ten years. It’s not completely clear why that’s happened. The trend now seems to be reversing (or at least encountering an upward blip). But it’s not clear why that’s happening either. I wish I had a clear explanation to give you. A big part of the story seems to involve national policy shifts, but there are some complications that don’t seem to have obvious explanations. These development...
CONTINUE READINGLos Angeles Releases First-Ever Urban Sustainability “pLAn”
Envisioning greener energy, cleaner air, and reduced consumption in LA by 2035
Perhaps no metropolis is better positioned than Los Angeles to pioneer ground-breaking environmental initiatives. As the second-largest U.S. city, and with the country’s largest municipally owned utility, a world-class research university--UCLA, and the blessings of abundant sunshine and a temperate Mediterranean climate, Los Angeles could serve as a global model for urban sustainability. Today, the City of Los Angeles took a significant step toward realizing its gl...
CONTINUE READINGCan the Supreme Court Provide Just Desserts?
Time for Different Flavors of Legal Reasoning
Ben and Jerry's flavor honoring Stephen Colbert -- "Americone Dream" -- has been so successful, people are coming with other ideas. Tania Lambrozio gets lawyers into the act with her nomination: "Ruth Bader Ginger." I've never actually had ginger ice cream, although I love ginger bread, so maybe it could work. Now there is a petition on change.org to do it, as well as other politically-inflected flavors (I think Mint Romney would be especially good -- its flavor would b...
CONTINUE READINGIt’s a Wonderful Law?
A thought experiment about the role of the ESA in California water management
[This post is co-authored by A. Dan Tarlock, Distguished Professor of Law, IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law.] Remember the movie “It’s a Wonderful Life,” which shows up on TV every year at Christmas season? In it George Bailey, played by Jimmy Stewart, gets a great gift from Clarence, an angel-in-training who intervenes as George is contemplating suicide. Clarence shows George the world as it would be if George had never existed. It turns out that George has ...
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