Pesticide Registration: Time for an Upgrade

UCLA Study Offers Recommendations to Improve the Pesticide Approval Process in California

We love our fresh fruits, vegetables and nuts in California.  They are healthy for us and for our economy; California leads the nation with agricultural revenues of over 44 billion dollars annually, and produces nearly half of the fruits, nuts and vegetables grown in the U.S.  But modern agriculture relies heavily on fumigants to produce this bounty in California and elsewhere in the United States.  Fumigants are a form of pesticide typically applied to the soil be...

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A New Climate Threat: “Academic Freedom” Laws

The other day I suggested that climate advocates ought to start working in school board elections as a way of building long term political support for vigorous climate action. Well, it looks like they will need to start playing defense as well.  October's Scientific American reports that climate deniers are now pushing the Orwellian "academic freedom" laws, which allow for the use of information only on creationist sites, many of which teach that the earth is no...

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Reforming Groundwater Adjudications: New Pritzker Environmental Policy Brief

A new report discusses groundwater in CA.

The Emmett Center on Climate Change and the Environment has released its latest Pritzker Environmental Law and Policy Brief, "Allocating Under Water: Reforming California's Groundwater Adjudications." California leads the nation in groundwater extraction, but it lags behind in updating groundwater-related laws and regulations. As a result, protracted litigation clogs the courts and often fails to protect water resources. Allocating Under Water identifies key reform...

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Environmental Law Hiring (Updated)

Job descriptions for Environmental Law positions around the country

As promised, here is an updated list of schools hiring in the area of environmental law: The Florida State University College of Law seeks to hire a lateral, tenure-track faculty member to fill a named professorship and teach in the areas of environmental law, energy law, land use, natural resources law, coastal and ocean law, or water law, or a combination of these. The College of Law is especially interested in senior lateral candidates. Please send a CV to Professo...

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Today’s House Subcommittee Hearing on Climate Change

President Obama’s recent announcement on climate change irritated some in Congress—but we didn’t need a hearing to find that out.

Today, Republican leaders in the House Energy and Power Subcommittee called a hearing to discuss climate change.  Has the Right suddenly taken an interest in responding to climate change? As you might anticipate, the answer is no.  The hearing, entitled “The Obama Administration’s Climate Change Policies and Activities,” focused on attacks to the President’s Climate Action Plan, challenging the Plan’s application and assumptions, from the need to address c...

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Breaking News: Ninth Circuit Upholds California’s Low Carbon Fuel Standard

Does California's life cycle analysis of the carbon intensity of transportation fuel facially discriminates against out-of-state ethanol?

In a sweeping victory for the California Air Resources Board, the Ninth Circuit today issued an opinion in Rocky Mountain Farmers Union v. Corey upholding the state's Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS) and reversing a lower court ruling that the LCFS facially discriminated against interstate commerce in violation of the U.S. Constitution.  The court also vacated the lower court's injunction preventing the LCFS from going into effect. The vote was 2-1 with Judges Doroth...

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Should Climate Advocates Fight School Board Elections?

Climate advocates might take a lesson from one of the most significant political movements of the last four decades: evangelical Christians.

Why have climate advocates failed in creating political support for significant climate policy?  Amy Luers thinks she knows.  In her recent piece, Rethinking US Climate Advocacy, her abstract states: It is time to reassess climate advocacy. To develop a strategy for philanthropy to strengthen climate engagement, I interviewed over 40 climate advocates, more than a dozen representatives from the foundation community, and a dozen academics. My assessment led me ...

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Single-Family Houses: A Smart Growth Strategy

Single family homes are a smart growth strategy as long they are planned and developed, well, smartly.

Sunday's New York Times features a story by Shaila Dewan asking, "Is Suburban Sprawl on the Way Back?"  Answer: not really, although highly compact urban development is hardly going to dominate, either.  The best quote from the whole piece comes from Smart Growth America President Geoff Anderson, who correctly observed, The market isn’t all for smart growth, nor is it all for sprawl, The thing for the last 50, 60 years has been that we’ve done nothing but s...

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CEQA reform turns into another special-interest exemption

Overall, this is a step back for CEQA reform.

Ethan recently noted the possibility of CEQA reform that might actually make sense: Reducing the focus on aesthetics and traffic in infill developments (which can result in worse environmental outcomes!), ongoing monitoring of impacts of projects after the CEQA process is completed, and providing some transparency in the CEQA litigation process.  (Though I still think that changing standing doctrine in CEQA might make some difference too.) But it looks like we won’...

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Market Manipulation in the Renewable Fuel Market Does Not Mean Market Manipulation in California’s Cap-and-Trade Program

It remains to be seen whether EPA will respond to the Times article by regulating the renewable fuel market in a way that virtually all other environmental trading markets do.

The New York Times article yesterday about Wall Street firms exploiting the market for renewable fuel credits and driving up prices could leave some observers worrying about the integrity of California's market for carbon allowances under its cap-and-trade program.  It shouldn't. Here's why.  Both programs allow businesses covered under the program to trade for credits to meet their environmental obligations.  In the case of the renewable fuel standard program, re...

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