Region: California
Scrap Yards, Scrapped Enforcement?
The City of Los Angeles’s regulatory tools exist to protect communities from metal recycling hazards—but they’re rarely invoked.
This post was co-written by UCLA Law student Kate Inman (J.D., 2026). Throughout California’s Senate District 20, roughly thirty scrap metal recycling facilities sit in the industrial corridors running alongside residential housing. For the working-class, majority-Latino communities living blocks away, the legal system has been slow to respond. Drive through Sun Valley or Pacoima on …
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CONTINUE READINGThe Other Half of Climate: Policy, Capital, and the Race to Scale Superpollutant Solutions
Learn how California is using satellite data to pull the emergency brake on global warming.
Methane and other short-lived climate pollutants (SLCPs) are responsible for nearly half of today’s net global warming. Because they exit the atmosphere quickly, reducing them can serve as an ‘emergency brake’ on rising temperatures. At the San Francisco Climate Week, UC Berkeley’s Center for Law, Energy and the Environment (CLEE) and the Institute for Governance …
CONTINUE READINGIs BACA Constitutional?
Limitations on judicial review in the initiative might violate separation of powers
The California Chamber of Commerce initiative to rewrite the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) has strict limits on judicial review for challenges to agency decisions for projects covered by the initiative. Courts may only hear claims “limited to a public agency’s non-compliance with objective existing laws, and the scope of the court’s review shall be …
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CONTINUE READINGThe 2026 Election and the Environment
Trump will still be able to take a lot of anti-environmental actions. But not as many as today.
I published a post a week ago about prospects for the upcoming 2026 elections. I didn’t say much, however, about why the results will matter for the environment. No matter what happens electorally, Trump will still be in the White House and able to use executive powers to favor fossil fuels and bulldoze environmental protections. Nevertheless, the elections could still make a real difference in environmental terms. Even just taking the House would matter, but there are additional potential environmental gains if there are power shifts in the Senate or governorships.
The best way to understand the shifts is probably to look at what Trump has been able to do with the support of Congress and then consider how the situation would shift if Democrats take one or both Houses.
BACA makes the ballot
Initiative to drastically change CEQA appears to have enough signatures to make ballot
It looks like the California Chamber of Commerce has enough signatures to put on the November ballot their initiative that would drastically change the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). Given that, I’m re-upping the analyses I did earlier this year on the measure: Part 1 (overview), Part 2 (sweeping scope of the initiative in terms …
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CONTINUE READINGDoes Taking Oil Money Disqualify You from Being Governor?
The Drain is a weekly roundup of environmental and climate news from Legal Planet.
UPDATE: At the time I published this article, Xavier Becerra had received the max contribution from Chevron of $39,200. Since publishing, Becerra has received much more support in the form of independent expenditures. As of May 21, Chevron had given $500,000 to an independent campaign committee supporting Becerra for governor. As of May 12, California …
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CONTINUE READINGNew Issue Brief: Community Engagement in Equity-Oriented EV Planning
Examining lessons from the Monterey Bay EV CAR Framework.
As federal support for the EV transition recedes, state and local planning processes are playing an increasingly central role in shaping equitable access to clean mobility infrastructure. Community engagement is a critical component of these efforts, yet relatively few case studies document how equity-oriented engagement processes work in practice. CLEE has released a new issue …
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CONTINUE READINGThe Story of California’s Advanced Clean Trucks Regulation
New CLEE report & webinar tells the story of this first-of-its-kind supply-side regulation for zero-emission trucks
California has been a global pioneer on electric vehicles, and that leadership extends to zero-emission trucks. To address the pollution and disproportionate impacts on disadvantaged communities, the California Air Resources Board (CARB) adopted the first-of-its-kind Advanced Clean Trucks (ACT) regulation in 2020. This landmark standard required truckmakers to begin selling zero-emission versions (such as battery …
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CONTINUE READINGCan Sustainability Be Abundant, Safe, and Affordable?
Read and watch key takeaways from the UCLA Emmett Institute’s 2026 symposium on climate policy and affordability.
This month, the UCLA Emmett Institute explored the intersection of climate goals, affordability concerns, and environmental protections by hosting a symposium titled “Can Abundance Be Sustainable?” The all-day, public event at UCLA School of Law brought together academics, community advocates, policymakers, journalists, students and—not one but two—heads of utility regulatory bodies. The goal was to think deeply about the path …
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CONTINUE READINGCalifornia’s Gas System Is Crumbling. SB 1359 Charts a Path to a Clean Energy Future.
SB 1359 (Stern, 2026) would adopt many of the proposed policies outlined in the 2025 UCLA Law report, “Go Big, Save Big: Approaches to Fund Building Electrification in California.”
A new bill introduced by Sen. Henry Stern, SB 1359 (2026), titled the “Gas Transition Responsibility and Electrification Act,” would establish a comprehensive framework to manage the transition away from natural gas and toward electrification in a way that protects ratepayers, reduces emissions, and ensures an orderly and equitable phase-down of gas infrastructure. Specifically, SB …
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