Waxman/Whitehouse carbon tax draft
On Tuesday, Representative Waxman, Senator Whitehouse, Representaive Blumenauer and Senator Schatz released their proposal for a carbon tax bill. They are currently seeking feedback on the draft proposal, which is accordingly short on details. The Waxman/Whitehouse proposal is to require downstream emitters (mainly power plants and other emitters) to purchase annual "carbon pollution permits" per ton of carbon-equivalent emissions in a given year. These permits will s...
CONTINUE READINGWilliam Brennan, Bob Woodward, and the Ethical Duties of a Justice
Washington Post editor/reporter Bob Woodward is in a good amount of hot water, and deservedly so, for publicly insinuating that White House economic advisory Gene Sperling threatened him in a recent e-mail exchange. As it turns out, when the exchange was revealed, Sperling was merely saying -- in a very friendly way -- that Woodward would "regret" writing that Obama had "moved the goalposts" in the debate over the sequester. Sperling wasn't threatening retaliation; h...
CONTINUE READINGCity of Los Angeles will promote widespread adoption of “cool roof” technology, citing benefits documented in Emmett Center report
One of the core goals of our environmental law programs at UCLA Law is to influence and inform public policy with our research. I'm proud to say that our Emmett Center on Climate Change and the Environment is doing exactly that. The City of Los Angeles, influenced by the Emmett Center's work, is moving forward with plans to ensure that the city and its residents adopt "cool roof" technology that saves energy and has the potential to dramatically reduce greenhouse gas...
CONTINUE READINGHow Warm is the Planet? — The Warmest in 5000 Years
A new study in the journal Science shows just how extraordinary our current weather is. Here are the key findings: In one century, we have reversed a five thousand year cooling trend. Global temperatures have gone from nearly the coldest to the warmest in the past five thousand years. To give some perspective, five thousand years ago was about when the first Pharaoh unified ancient Egypt, about five hundred years before the first pyramids. In other words, we're ...
CONTINUE READINGNew Hope for Genetically-Engineered Food Labeling?
Many observers believed that the defeat of California's Proposition 37 at the polls last November spelled a significant--and perhaps fatal--political setback for state and national efforts to require labeling of genetically engineered food products. But two recent articles from the New York Times suggest that the GMO labeling movement is far from dead. Last week the Times reported that Whole Foods Market plans to require labeling of all genetically modified foods sold...
CONTINUE READINGDavid Brooks, Tree-Hugger
David Brooks' column a few days ago makes an interesting case for radical environmentalism -- even if Brooks doesn't see the implications of his argument. Brooks thinks he is writing a paean to Orthodox Jews in Brooklyn: Those of us in secular America live in a culture that takes the supremacy of individual autonomy as a given. Life is a journey. You choose your own path. You can live in the city or the suburbs, be a Wiccan or a biker. For the people who shop at [an go...
CONTINUE READINGMiddle of the First Inning: Big Cola 1, Public Health 0
The NY Times reports that a New York trial court has invalidated New York's rule banning giant-sized sugar soft-drinks. The court's decision can be found here. On a quick read, the decision seems to rest on two grounds: 1. The rule exceeds the powers of the public health board, despite a provision in the New York city charter giving the board broad jurisdiction to protect the health of the city. The court's holding seems to rest on a doctrine created by the ...
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CONTINUE READINGLogging, tropical forests, and biodiversity — what we don’t know
Cross-posted at The Berkeley Blog. A new paper in Conservation Biology (subscription required) from researchers at UC Berkeley and elsewhere provides an important reminder that we often don't know as much as we think we do about ecological systems and the effects of human actions on those systems. Lead author Benjamin Ramage and colleagues evaluated all the studies they could find in the peer-reviewed literature for a ten-year period that made claims about the effects o...
CONTINUE READINGOT 2012 and the Environment
This Supreme Court Term features a number of environmental cases. We're now about two-thirds of the way through the Term, so I thought it might be helpful to post a summary of the cases. My impression is that the Court is interested in environmental law to the extent that it seems to impinge on the rights of individual property owners. But the Court doesn't seem take much of an interest in risk regulation or air pollution, despite their importance for the economy and...
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