Will House Republicans Save Food Aid Reform?
These next 48 hours are critical for advancing reform of US international food aid, which I have blogged about previously. Short version: because current rules essentially demand that we provide aid in food grown in the US via government subsidy, our current aid regime wastes money, delays delivery of aid by weeks, lines the pockets of agribusiness and big shipping, often undermines farmers in the Global South, and leaves 2-4 million people starving who could otherwi...
CONTINUE READINGNot With a Bang, But With a Whimper…
As the current U.S. Supreme Court term winds down--the justices' final opinions are due next week--attention begins to turn to the Court's next session, scheduled to begin in October 2013. Until this week, the justices had one environmental law case on their docket for next year: U.S. Forest Service v. Pacific Rivers Council, No. 12-625. Not anymore. This week, the Court issued a cryptic order dismissing the Pacific Rivers case as moot. But it's the back-story that's in...
CONTINUE READINGA New “Study” on Forest Certification: SFI’s Latest Attempt to Fool Consumers?
I've posted before on the competing systems of forest certification, in particular the fight between the Forestry Stewardship Council (FSC), which is really the gold standard, and the Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI), an industry-driven effort that has substantially weaker standards and many have accused of greenwashing. SFI has improved its standards in recent years, but often retreats into vagueness and opens up huge loopholes for environmentally destructive p...
CONTINUE READINGConstitutional Issues in Cap and Trade: New Light from an Unexpected Source
At the end of April, the Supreme Court decided an obscure case called McBurney v. Young about state public records law. Quite unexpectedly, the court's opinion turns out to be good news for state environmental regulators. In particular, it clarifies how cap and trade relates to what lawyers call the dormant commerce clause -- a doctrine that prevents states from creating barriers to interstate commerce. McBurney may also have some implications for renewa...
CONTINUE READINGQuality of Life Dynamics in Rural Renewable Power Communities
A journal called Energy Policy will soon publish my paper titled; Local Non-Market Quality of Life Dynamics in New Wind Farm Communities. We know that renewable power generation (both solar panels and wind turbines) requires land. It wouldn't be efficient to transform Beverly Hills into wind farms even if it was a windy place. Thus, much renewable power generation takes place far from our cities. While this activity offers social benefits to society as reliance...
CONTINUE READINGMt Baldy getting balder? Scary projections of SoCal snow loss just released
UCLA is releasing today the first-ever detailed study of the effects of climate change on local snowfall, examining both business-as-usual and mitigation emission scenarios. Snow loss is predicted to be very significant both in the mid-term (2041-2060) and by the end of the century. The image above shows the study's projections for reduced end-of-century snowfall under a business-as-usual emission scenario. Details on the study are available at the C-ChangeLA web...
CONTINUE READINGIn Praise of the 9-0 Supreme Court Loss: LA Port’s Clean Trucks Program lives on
If you're an environmental group and you find yourself in front of today's Supreme Court, in some sense you've already lost. Nothwithstanding the 2007 Mass v EPA victory for climate change regulation, the Supremes tend not to look kindly, lately, on environmental interests. (Richard Lazarus has argued that the record of NEPA losses at the Court isn't as bad as it looks, which may be true, but it's still a pretty dismal record.) Sometimes the best you can wish for is to...
CONTINUE READINGCourt Doesn’t Cast Much Doubt on the Constitutionality of Michigan’s Renewable Portfolio Standard
Thanks to Ann Carlson for pointing out the significant decision recently issued by 7th Circuit Court of Appeals related to allocating the cost for new electric transmission lines and for so concisely describing its complicated fact pattern. But I have to respectfully disagree with Ann’s suggestion that this decision has cast any meaningful doubt on the constitutionality of Michigan’s renewable portfolio standard . Judge Posner’s throw-away comment about the Commer...
CONTINUE READINGThe State Senate’s proposal for CEQA reform
The State Senate recently passed its version of CEQA reform. Having looked over the bill, it’s much better than I feared. What seems to be the most important change is a move towards adopting standard setting in CEQA – i.e., making generalized determinations about what levels of certain kinds of impacts are “significant” such that full CEQA review is needed. As Ethan noted earlier, this has been a regular push on the part of industry and business, and he su...
CONTINUE READINGMalibu Beach Access and the 99%
Is public property public property? Malibu has some wonderful beaches and these are supposed to be public property. Nearby home owners have effectively privatized these beaches by making it difficult for beach visitors to park and to know where the public paths to the beach are actually located. Facing this asymmetric information problem, an "app maker" named Jenny Price has created a new map ap that educates the beach visiting public about where they can access t...
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