Previewing Next Week’s Climate Change Arguments in the U.S. Supreme Court

Big Stakes and Big Players in This Year's Biggest Environmental Case

On Monday, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in the biggest environmental law case of its current Term, Utility Air Regulatory Group v. EPA. Legal Planet colleagues Ann Carlson and Dan Farber have already posted their thoughts on the case. Let me add mine. Utility Air Regulatory Group involves EPA's authority to regulate stationary sources of greenhouse gas emissions (factories,refineries and the like) under the federal Clean Air Act. A broad coalition...

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Would Californians be Better Off with a Fuel Tax instead of Cap-and-Trade?

Steinberg's surprising proposal for California climate regulation

Climate regulation drama!  Sen. Darrell Steinberg is floating a proposal that would change California law to take transportation fuels out of the cap-and-trade program, and to enact a new fuels tax instead.  As background, distributors of those fuels are slated to join the cap-and-trade program in 2015, meaning they would need allowances to cover their greenhouse gas emissions starting in January of that year, through 2020. I have no idea what the politics of the pr...

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What Are the Possible Outcomes in U.S. Supreme Court Greenhouse Gas Case?

Court likely to rule in favor of EPA

Next Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in Utility Air Regulatory Group (UTAG) v. EPA.  I've previously described what is at stake in the case here and here and, in the interest of full disclosure, helped author a brief in support of EPA's position.   The oral arguments might begin to reveal how the Court will rule on the case.  My prediction, without the benefit of the oral argument, is that the Court will uphold EPA's regulations, which interpr...

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Peering Behind OIRA’s Veil of Secrecy

OIRA is staffed by under-trained, over-worked short-termers.

OIRA is an agency whose functions are as mysterious to most people as its name.  It doesn't help much to learn that OIRA stands for Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs.  The phrase "regulatory czars" is more informative.  OIRA runs the federal government's regulatory process.  Although agencies like EPA are required to have a lot of transparency, not much public information is available about who works at OIRA or what they do.  But Greenwire has managed t...

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Plain Language, Climate Change, and the Supreme Court

The language of the statute relating to next week's argument is clear -- but there's a fly in the ointment.

The Supreme Court will be hearing argument next week in Utility Air Regulatory Group v. EPA.  It's basically a very simple statutory interpretation case, except for two things.  First, it's about climate change, and nothing about climate change ever seems to be simple and straightforward.  Second, although the language of the statute, prior Supreme Court precedent, and decades of administrative practice support EPA's position, there's a very awkward side-effect that ...

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Wyoming Wind Power and California Electricity

Supporting renewable energy in Wyoming makes political sense

A company wants to build a lot of wind power in Wyoming.  A lot.  3,000 megawatts.  The size of three nuclear reactors.  And ship all of the power to California.  None of it will be used in Wyoming, where electricity primarily comes from coal, and where the state has been strongly resistant to various policies to encourage renewable power, such as renewable portfolio standards. There are some critics of the deal in California, who argue that we should keep “gre...

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Berkeley Law Amicus Brief Highlights Benefits of Transit-Oriented Development

Smart growth alternatives would help end the vicious cycle of highway expansion and housing sprawl in San Diego region

Berkeley Law's Center for Law, Energy & the Environment (CLEE) filed an amicus brief last week in a California Court of Appeal case with far-reaching implications for development, transportation, and California's climate goals. The case, Cleveland National Forest Foundation v. San Diego Association of Governments (SANDAG), challenges the State's first Regional Transportation Plan/Sustainable Communities Strategy for its failure to properly analyze and mitigate enviro...

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Protecting Marine “Wilderness”

A new study shows how to strengthen marine preserves.

The Bush Administration is not remembered fondly by environmentalists, but one important exception came at the beginning of 2009.  That's when President Bush created an additional 195,000 square miles of marine reserves, on top of the 140,000 miles he had created previously.  Such marine reserves are not unique to the United States, of course.  Yet, until now we have not had a good sense of how to make these reserves effective.  A new study in Nature helps fill that...

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How Legalizing Marijuana Could Help Fight Climate Change

The link between indoor grow operations and energy data

Now that the two states that just legalized marijuana sent their football teams to the Superbowl this year, it’s clear that the stars are aligning for legalizing marijuana nationwide. Sure, legalizing marijuana makes fiscal, moral, and practical sense, but what about the benefits to the environment? Well, it turns out that even the fight against climate change could potentially be enhanced by making cannabis -- and the grow operations that produce it -- legal. It ...

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It’s Not Waste, It’s An Ecosystem

Letting rivers flow supports ecosystems and people

One thing that droughts in the West provoke are political battles over water.  The drought that California is currently in is no exception.  Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives have just passed a bill that would – more or less – exempt farmers in the Central Valley from environmental laws like the Endangered Species Act when it comes to withdrawing water from California rivers for irrigation.  Projects to restore free-flowing water to the San Joaquin ...

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