Industry Coalition Petitions for Supreme Court Review of D.C. Circuit Decision on Greenhouse Gas Rules
Yesterday, American Chemistry Council and a coalition of other industry groups filed a petition for U.S. Supreme Court review of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals’ June, 26 2012 decision upholding the Environmental Protection Agency’s greenhouse gas rules. As Dan previously discussed here, the D.C. Circuit denied rehearing of its decision in December. The American Chemistry Council petition joins several other petitions that state and industry groups have filed o...
CONTINUE READINGGuest Blogger Miriam Seifter: The Environmental Dimension of American Trucking
On Tuesday, the Supreme Court heard argument in American Trucking Associations, Inc. v. City of Los Angeles, a case addressing the preemptive scope of the Federal Aviation Administration Authorization Act (FAAAA). Over at Scotusblog, I’ve discussed the two relatively technical questions presented in the case. The first asks whether two provisions in the Port of Los Angeles’s mandatory concession agreements with motor carriers—one provision requiring off-street ...
CONTINUE READINGObama Administration Releases National Ocean Policy Implementation Plan
Yesterday, the National Ocean Council released the Obama Administration’s much anticipated plan for implementing the National Ocean Policy. The newly released National Ocean Policy Implementation Plan identifies practical, efficient, and responsible actions that Federal agencies will take to support healthy, productive, and resilient ocean, coastal, and Great Lakes waters, thriving coastal communities, and a robust, safe, and secure marine economy. The Implementation...
CONTINUE READINGThree Cheers for the Modest Economist
I agree with every word in Jonathan's recent blog post. In 1988, I entered the University of Chicago's Ph.D. program intending to become a macro economist. I quickly decided that the subject was too hard and that the macro data were of low quality and since there is (and was) no "control group" there was (and is) no possibility of convincingly testing hypotheses of "what causes what". I have lived my life as a happy applied environmental and urban economist and ...
CONTINUE READINGCalifornia Sued Again Over Cap-and-Trade Program
Pacific Legal Foundation filed suit today against the state’s Air Resources Board on the grounds that the auction of allowances under California’s cap-and-trade program constitutes an unconstitutional tax. In the new suit, Morning Star Packing Company v. California Air Resources Board, PLF argues that a) the auctioning of revenues constitute a tax which b) requires a two-thirds vote of the Legislature which c) it hasn’t received because AB 32 doesn’t author...
CONTINUE READING(Another) Bad Day for Economists
One interesting project for future intellectual historians will be figuring out how economics became the queen of the social scientists when virtually none of their predictions have come true and so much of their empirical work is downright shoddy. Perhaps it will lie in the way ideology can take over the discipline because of data specifications and econometric choices. But sometimes it's just simple ignorance. Earlier today, we discovered that the famous work by K...
CONTINUE READINGChinese Willingness to Pay for Clean Air
In joint research with several of my friends, in this recently published paper we use cross- Chinese city data on real estate prices and ambient air pollution to measure the rent premium in cleaner cities. The benefits of any environmental regulation hinge on its causal impact on ambient pollution and on how much people value a reduction in pollution and on how many people are exposed. Our work provides new estimates on the 2nd factor. A novel feature of our pa...
CONTINUE READINGAn Energy No-Brainer
There are a lot of things to disagree about in terms of energy policy. One thing that ought to be common ground, as discussed in a Washington Post column, is increased research in energy R&D. As this chart shows, federal support for energy R&D is smaller than it was under Ronald Reagan: The economic argument for supporting R&D is simple. Private firms don't have enough of an incentive to engage in basic research because intellectual property law does...
CONTINUE READINGBagenstos on the Health Care Case: Critical Reading for Environmental Lawyers
Sam Bagenstos at Michigan Law School has long distinguished himself as one of the most thoughtful constitutional doctrinalists in the country (and maybe the best disability scholar as well). He is out with a new article in the Georgetown Law Journal concerning the Spending Clause implications of the health care case. Environmental lawyers and scholars should care about this for obvious reasons: major environmental statutes rely on funding incentives to get states t...
CONTINUE READINGHydraulic Fracking in California: New Report Addresses Wastewater and Potential Water Impacts
Today, Berkeley Law released a new report on hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) in California, focusing on wastewater and potential water quality impacts. The report, Regulation of Hydraulic Fracturing in California: A Wastewater and Water Quality Perspective, is an independent analysis produced by Berkeley Law’s Center for Law, Energy & the Environment (CLEE) through its new initiative, the Wheeler Institute for Water Law & Policy (Wheeler Institute). ...
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