New Chemical Regulations Go Live in California

Making Prevention Real?

Today, after years of discussions and drafts, California's new Safer Consumer Product regulations take effect.  They create a comprehensive chemicals regulatory scheme having three steps: identification and prioritization of consumer products containing chemicals of greatest concern (“product-chemical combinations”); performance of “alternative analyses” by the manufacturers of those high priority product-chemical combinations; and selection of regulatory respo...

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The New IPCC Assessment, Carbon Budgets and the Role of the U.S.

National Academy Study Used the Carbon Budget Approach Taken in New IPCC Report to Show How the U.S. Could Limit Emissions

Today's major environmental news is, of course, the release of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's 5th Assessment Report addressing the physical science basis for climate change.  The findings are strong and alarming:  warming of the climate system is unequivocal and unprecedented; atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions "have increased to levels unprecedented in at least the last 800,000 years" and "human influence o...

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Welcome to the New Legal Planet

New design with augmented functionality

We have just completed a redesign geared towards improving your reading experience.  Please take a look around! If you would like to change your Legal Planet email delivery preferences, please click on the "Manage Subscriptions" link at the end of this, or any, email notification from us. You have the option to receive email notices for each post As Posted, in a Daily Recap email, or in a Weekly Recap. We are especially grateful to Robert Glenn Ketchum, a UCLA...

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Environmental Impacts of Fracking: Three Layers of the Onion

This summer, The Emmett Center at UCLA jointly sponsored with the Union of Concerned Scientists a two-day workshop on unconventional oil and gas production technologies, aka fracking:  two days of expert working groups on science and risk assessment, law and regulation, and public information and engagement, followed by a public forum.  The public forum was pretty contentious (the working groups less so), on all the issues dominating debates over fracking nationwide, i...

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If we could see it, would we stop it?

Making carbon pollution visible.

Cross-posted at The Berkeley Blog. It's difficult to see something as a problem if we can't see it at all. That's one problem with coming to grips with greenhouse gas pollution. It doesn't show up in the air the way smog does, and its impacts aren't directly linked to emissions in perceptible ways. Interestingly, it turns out that's not just a challenge, it's a business opportunity. Carbon Visuals is "a business dedicated to helping everyone better understand c...

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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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