A Path Forward for Vehicle Electrification?
It’s been a rough few months for vehicle electrification efforts in the United States. While Congress swaps proposals to eliminate federal electric vehicle purchase, manufacturing, and charging incentives in order to “pay for” massive tax cuts for the wealthy, President Trump last week signed a Congressional Review Act resolution that claims to eliminate California’s nation-leading zero-emission vehicle standards (a move that, as Ann Carlson noted last month, is ...
CONTINUE READINGClimate Adaptation Finance: Garbage In, Garbage Out
A new study reveals the hard truth about the lack of real adaptation data.
Today in Science, a new study delicately uses a lot of words to tell us something that many have long suspected: we really don't know what in the world is going on. The study, by three scholars at Oxford University's Environmental Change Institute, notes that pretty much all climate adaptation funds focus on inputs -- how much has been devoted to a project -- rather than outputs, i.e. has anything worked? And even on the input front, there is a huge problem. We ...
CONTINUE READINGTalking to Skeptics About Clean Energy
Some people will stop listening if you talk about climate change. But there are other arguments.
Cimate change provides a compelling reason to support clean energy. But that argument can be futile — or worse, counterproductive — when listeners don’t take climate change seriously or reject the idea altogether. Fortunately, there are other arguments that may better appeal to them. You might begin by pointing out that clean energy isn't just a liberal thing. Texas is #1 for wind power, #2 (and rising) for solar, and #3 for EVs. Here are some talking point...
CONTINUE READINGIt’s back.
Land sale provisions are back in reconciliation. And they are far worse than before.
Last time I posted on this topic, the Republican majority in the House of Representatives was considering a provision to sell or dispose of public lands in Utah and Nevada, arguably on the grounds of facilitating needed housing production around growing metropolitan areas. That provision was criticized across the political spectrum, received opposition from a leading House Republican, and ultimately was stripped from the bill. The Senate Committee on Energy and Natu...
CONTINUE READINGCan Public Ownership Fix Our Electricity Woes? It’s Complicated
New UCLA report "Power Struggle: California's Electric Utility Ownership Dilemma" by Sylvie Ashford, Mohit Chhabra, and Ruthie Lazenby
This post is co-authored by Sylvie Ashford and Mohit Chhabra. California’s investor-owned utilities (IOUs) are under intense scrutiny for causing deadly wildfires and charging some of the nation’s highest electricity rates. Adding to these challenges, IOUs are required to make significant clean energy and grid investments to achieve the state’s goal of a net zero carbon economy by 2045, while keeping electricity affordable and reliable. These big asks are of...
CONTINUE READINGImmigration Raids are an Attack on Climate
The Drain is a weekly roundup of environmental and climate news from Legal Planet.
It’s hard to watch the Trump administration test drive authoritarianism in California. Since the inauguration, I’ve found solace in slowly rewatching The West Wing, a good bedtime story for anyone who feels nostalgia for partisan politics of yesteryear. Anyone else doing this? It’s uncanny how my rewatching has lined up with real world events. In April when Sen. Cory Booker gave his 25-hour speech on the floor, I watched the episode in which a fictional S...
CONTINUE READINGThe Annihilation of Environmental Justice: A Timeline
Trump has spared no effort to ensure that the government ignores the needs of vulnerable communities.
There has been a systematic war of elimination against protections for vulnerable communities. This includes not only any protections for minority communities, but also those for poor communities, minority or white. While initiated by Trump, the effort has included a ream of destructive follow-on actions. The best way to make the point is a chronological account. Jan. 20. A “Day One” executive order directs agencies to terminate all environmental justice offic...
CONTINUE READINGReclaiming Science, Democracy, and American Values
In This Moment, What Do We Say to Young People?
Like many in academia, I work and interact daily with people in their 20s. Unsurprisingly, they, as a group, are now confronting feelings of fear, uncertainty, anger, and displacement, embarking into a new reality. Long held American values are under vicious attack. Their future is at stake. So what should we counsel? Whether you believe in American Exceptionalism (that the United States is unique, distinct, or exemplary compared to other nations) or not, it i...
CONTINUE READINGLast Year’s Climate Bond May Not Be What You Thought
While investing in important adaptation and resilience measures, Proposition 4 does less to create new clean energy infrastructure investments
Last year, legislators passed, the governor signed, and California voters approved, a ten billion dollar climate bond (the Safe Drinking Water, Wildfire Prevention, Drought Preparedness, and Clean Air Bond Act of 2024, SB 867 (Allen), which appeared on the November ballot as Proposition 4). While the bond act’s full title largely tells the story of its contents, the water- and resilience-focused spending may not be what all Californians expected from the state’s firs...
CONTINUE READING(In?)sane With the Membrane
New developments in Deep Sea Desalination hold important promise for the freshwater crisis - and might require an amendment to Clarke's Third Law.
The great speculative fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke’s Third Law reads: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” This principle came to me the other day when considering this interesting Wall Street Journal piece on Deep Sea Desalination (which we can call DSD for short). Virtually alone among environmental law professors, I am a desalination booster (which I explain below). The idea behind DSD is to place desalination machine...
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