Clear Views in the High Desert
If you are looking for a politically progressive city, Lancaster, California would not make it on your list. Located in the deeply conservative Antelope Valley of north Los Angeles County, it has attracted attention by, inter alia, 1) electing Pete Knight, one of the most vicious anti-gay politicians in the country, to a series of state legislative positions; 2) being sued by the NAACP for a pattern and practice of discriminating against Section 8 housing voucher reci...
CONTINUE READINGThe Demand for Temperate Climate and The Quality of Life Impacts Caused by Climate Change
Some good friends of mine have written an important paper on the economic costs of climate change with a focus on its impact on amenities and the "good life". In a nutshell, will San Francisco continue to be "San Francisco" as climate change plays out? What would we lose if it becomes Fresno? This is an academic paper written for other academic economists but I believe that a broad audience can skim the paper to get a better sense of how economists speak to ...
CONTINUE READINGClimate Adaptation and the Two Chinas (and the Two Brazils, and the Two Indias….)
The world used to be divided into developed countries and developing countries, but a third group has now taken the stage: emerging economies like China, India, and Brazil that are growing very rapidly but haven't yet attained developed country status. But development in these countries is uneven. In China, for example, there has been explosive economic growth in urban areas but the countryside still remains very poor. International climate law has long had the conc...
CONTINUE READINGIf It Quacks Like a Duck: Intermittent Renewables and the Grid
At an energy policy conference that I attended on campus recently, one of the speakers asked how many people in the audience were familiar with the Duck Chart. As someone who tries to stay on top of things in the energy world, I was surprised by how many people raised a hand to express familiarity with this thing I had never heard of. Fortunately, with the benefit of the Internet, I was staring at a duck-evoking image within a few minutes. It’s a bit of a Rorschach te...
CONTINUE READINGComparing U.S. Universities’ Environmental Programs
When the U.S. News rankings came out, naturally I looked first at the rankings for environmental law. But then I got curious about the rankings for other environmental fields. I had very little idea, for example, about how ecology departments were ranked. Of course, we all know about the issues with U.S. News's methodology. There were certainly great environmental law programs that didn't make their top-ten listing, and this is probably true in other fields. But...
CONTINUE READINGRemedial Education for Berkeley Law Faculty
Or at least for John Yoo, who argues: Courts award damages based on the harm to the victim and the harm to society. Suppose you thought that the Iraq war was a mistake. If so, isn't the proper remedy to restore Saddam Hussein's family and the Baath Party to power in Iraq? If you are unwilling to consider that remedy, aren't you conceding that on balance, the benefits of the war outweigh the costs? Uh, that would be no and no. This is first-year Tort Law. The point of ...
CONTINUE READINGCongress Increases Climate Research Funding!
...even if they didn't intend to. The Republican War on Science has morphed into a more general war on knowledge. As Dan has pointed out previously, the GOP has now declared war on social science funding, and particularly on political science. Last night, the Senate accepted the amendment of Senator Tom Coburn (R - Olduvai Gorge) forbidding the National Science Foundation from funding political science research. This provision, which will undoubtedly be accepted ...
CONTINUE READINGWhat Can and Should the President do About Climate Change Without Congress?
President Obama made clear in his State of the Union that he would do everything within in his power to combat climate change even if Congress refused to go along. Here are his words: I urge this Congress to pursue a bipartisan, market-based solution to climate change, like the one John McCain and Joe Lieberman worked on together a few years ago. But if Congress won’t act soon to protect future generations, I will. I will direct my Cabinet to come up with executive...
CONTINUE READINGBreaking News: PACE Dies in the Ninth Circuit
The West Coast PACE litigation party appears to have ended. After favorable rulings from the California Northern District Court for PACE backers, the Ninth Circuit today dismissed the case outright. As background, Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) programs allow municipal governments to finance residential and commercial energy improvements, with property owners repaying the governments via property tax assessments. The program was just taking off in states across t...
CONTINUE READINGU.S. Supreme Court Grants Review in Pacific Rivers Council Case
Today the U.S. Supreme Court granted certiorari in a major forestry and NEPA case from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals: U.S. Forest Service v. Pacific Rivers Council, No. 12-623. The case will be argued and decided in the Court's next (2013-14) Term. The issues the justices have agreed to consider in Pacific Rivers Council are threefold: 1) whether the environmental challengers to the 2004 Forest Service Plan directing USFS's management of the 11 national forests...
CONTINUE READINGJoin Our Mailing List
Climate policy is changing rapidly. Stay in the loop with expert analysis via email Monday - Friday.
