SPEED bump?
Recent proposal for NEPA reform in House of Representatives is sweeping and perhaps counterproductive
The House of Representatives recently held a hearing on the SPEED Act, a proposal for NEPA reform advanced by Representatives Westerman (R-Arkansas) and Golden (D-Maine). While the public announcement by the majority for the bill is that it is simply “commonsense upgrades,” a close review indicates that it would produce potentially dramatic changes to NEPA, effectively wipe out agency incentives to comply with NEPA, eliminate judicial review of NEPA, and (if it doe...
CONTINUE READINGNew CARB Chair, New CARB Mandate
Lauren Sanchez has been named to the state's most important climate job.
About 15 years ago, when presenting about California's then-new climate change law AB32, I used to show a slide with six words on it — "Why Mary Nichols Rules the World"— along with a huge photo of Mary. The slide let me talk about the enormous authority and discretion bestowed by AB32 on one agency, the California Air Resources Board. The 2006 legislation set fairly ambitious climate goals and essentially told ARB to go figure out how to meet those goals, targetin...
CONTINUE READINGThe War on Science: Week 35
Every week we get more reports about the Administration’s anti-science campaign.
It was just another week in the government’s war on science. Rather than editorialize about what’s going on, I thought it would be more useful just to relay what has come out in news reports over the last week. The facts really speak for themselves. ITEM. On Saturday, we learned that EPA’s water division had told its scientists to pause publication of papers in scientific journals pending a “review.” The order came from political appointees. There’s li...
CONTINUE READINGThe perils of federal abundance legislation
Political polarization at the federal level is a steep obstacle to any major abundance reforms
I recently wrote an assessment of the ROAD Act, a bill in the US Senate that would do some (mild) changes to NEPA and develop some guidelines and incentives for state and local governments to amend their zoning to facilitate more housing production. While the ROAD Act may be fine policy, one question is whether it is a good political choice, in the long run, to move abundance-related policy reform to the federal level. Advocates for reform of state and local land-us...
CONTINUE READINGLet’s All Play The Zoning Game!
SB 79 passes, but could there be a huge loophole in it?
Well, there’s the reason why the last election I ever won was for chalkboard monitor in the second grade. Last Friday, the California Senate passed the Assembly’s version of SB 79 (Wiener), which mandates higher densities and height restrictions within a half-mile of high-quality transit stops (with diminishing densities and heights the farther one goes from the stop). I said last week that I saw no reason why the Legislature should move on this bill now: it w...
CONTINUE READINGNational Academies School the Trump Administration on Gold-standard Science
Report on Effects of Human-Caused GHG Emissions on US Climate, Health, and Welfare shows how actual science is done.
It's not news that the Trump administration has little interest in getting the facts right. But facts often matter for crafting policy that serves our societal goals. And it's not rare for the law to require that specific factual findings underpin government decisions. In both cases, we need to assemble, understand, and apply the best available scientific information. This week the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine did just that, responding to ...
CONTINUE READINGThe Forgotten Constitution
There’s a lot more than the “executive power” in there.
If you listen to the Trumpies, you might think that the Constitution was one sentence long, with that sentence vesting the executive power in the President. That’s the theory behind his efforts to remake the government – including environmental regulation – single-handedly. But there’s a lot more in there. Much of that forgotten language is directly relevant to the presidential actions that are now shaking the government, including environmental governance. Here ...
CONTINUE READINGDOJ Challenge to Vermont’s Climate Law Has a Problem
The EPA's proposed repeal of the endangerment finding undermines the U.S. position in the Vermont Climate Superfund Case.
EPA's proposal to rescind the Clean Air Act endangerment finding is not final but it is already causing problems for the Trump Administration in court. The Department of Justice today filed a brief for summary judgment challenging Vermont's climate superfund law. Its principal argument? That the Clean Air Act — in regulating greenhouse gases — preempts Vermont's statute. But repeal of the endangerment finding would take the U.S. out of the business of regulat...
CONTINUE READINGCalifornia Takes a Stab at Climate and Energy Costs
The Drain is a weekly roundup of environmental and climate news from Legal Planet.
It's remarkable that with everything else that’s raging, climate and energy bills still managed to dominate the legislative session that just wrapped in Sacramento. After all, the reason lawmakers were still at work this past Saturday — the day after the legislative session was supposed to end — was that negotiations on climate bills pushed them into overtime. Gov. Gavin Newsom, Senator Pro Tem McGuire, and Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas reached last-minute a...
CONTINUE READINGThe ROAD to housing?
Initial federal legislation advancing more housing is limited in scope.
There’s been a lot of legislative action advancing housing production through reforms to land-use and environmental regulations at the state level, including California. Now, the federal government is every so gingerly stepping into the area. The ROAD Act passed unanimously through the relevant Senate committee last month. In this blog post I’ll provide a brief assessment of what the Act does with respect to land-use and environmental law. The ROAD Act’s p...
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