Supreme Court Grants Cert. in Interstate Pollution Case
The Supreme Court agreed this morning to review a D.C. Circuit opinion that had struck down EPA's effort to curb interstate pollution. This is welcome news. As I wrote when the lower court ruled: Now that I’ve had a chance to read the lengthy opinion in EMR Homer City Generation v. EPA, I’m struck by the aggressiveness of the court’s intervention, which goes well beyond the customary degree of judicial oversight over agencies. The court comes perilously close t...
CONTINUE READINGRegulators Between a Rock and a Hard Place: The Extraterritorial Dilemma
Current dormant commerce clause doctrine creates an incredible dilemma for state lawmakers. No matter what they do, they are at serious risk of attack under the dormant commerce clause. Here's an example. Suppose a state wants to move its own electricity generators from fossil fuels to renewable energy. For instance, the state might require that utilities get a third of their electricity from wind and solar. There's no question about the state's constitutional authority ...
CONTINUE READINGU.S. Supreme Court Rules for Property Owners–Again
Observers continue to await the third and most significant property rights case on the Supreme Court's docket this Term--Koontz v. St. Johns River Water Management District--which should be released later this week. In the meantime, another property rights case was decided by the justices earlier this month that, while largely overlooked by the media, represents another significant Supreme Court win for property rights advocates--for reasons having nothing to do with t...
CONTINUE READINGDe-Extinction Conference
Last month, I participated in a conference on the topic of de-extinction -- efforts to resurrect all or part of the genome of extinct animals. The goal would be to have something very much akin to the wooly mammoth or the passenger pigeon, perhaps released into the wild. (And no, this isn't going to work with dinosaurs -- no usable DNA, so no chance of Jurassic Park.) This concept gives rise to fascinating issues ranging from molecular biology to philosophy. There are en...
CONTINUE READINGU.C. Davis Professor Dan Sperling Awarded Blue Planet Prize
Kudos to my U.C. Davis faculty colleague, Dan Sperling, this year's recipient of the prestigious Blue Planet Prize. The Prize, awarded by the Asahi Glass Foundation, is often referred to as the Nobel Prize for environmental science. Dan Sperling is one of the most influential transportation scholars and policymakers in America. A professor of engineering at U.C. Davis, he also directs UCD's Institute for Transportation Studies, as well as the University's newly-formed...
CONTINUE READINGFlashing Back to the Day When Rush Limbaugh Discussed my Environmental Research
The Legal Planet blog tends to focus on serious subjects. I salute this but I always try to cross the line. A few years ago, Matt Kotchen and I wrote a good paper documenting that the deep recession had chilled interest in combating climate change. Our empirical study used Google search trends by state/year/month. We documented that searches for the words "global warming" declined the most in states where the unemployment rate had increased the most while searches for ...
CONTINUE READINGWill 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...
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