Should Environmental Lawyers Care about the Alien Tort Statute?
The Supreme Court term tomorrow opens with a bang: Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum, which has assumed very large significance in the international human rights community. But should Legal Planet readers care? I think that they should. The plaintiffs in Kiobel allege that Royal Dutch Petroleum (better known in the United States as Shell Oil) aided and abetted the military government of Nigeria (from 1992 to 1995)in a systematic campaign of torture, extrajudicial ...
CONTINUE READINGPaul Ryan and the National Carbon Debt
Climate denialists applauded Mitt Romney's selection of Paul Ryan for what they call Ryan's "awesome energy & climate record." That's not surprising: Ryan does have a clear record on climate change. As ThinkProgress has documented: Ryan has voted to prevent the Environmental Protection Agency from limiting greenhouse pollution, to eliminate White House climate advisers, to block the U.S. Department of Agriculture from preparing for climate disasters like the dr...
CONTINUE READINGUndecided Voters and Climate Change
If you tuned in to the Republican National Convention, you probably heard Republican nominee Mitt Romney take a stab at President Obama’s 2008 remarks about slowing the pace of global warming. Romney allowed his line to speak for itself, and delegates and the audience erupted in laughter. Yes, global warming was used as a laugh line at the RNC. Setting aside the obvious insult to the majority of Americans and 97% of scientists around the world who believe we nee...
CONTINUE READINGMaking the Best of a Bad Day in LA
Drivers in LA may be holding their collective breath waiting for "Carmageddon II" to end, but a new UCLA study suggests that they may have it backwards. For those of you who don't live with the traffic here in the City of Angels, this weekend a major artery was shut down to allow for removal of a bridge on the 405 freeway as part of an apparently endless road construction project. It is the second major shut down, the last one occurring over a weekend in July. A...
CONTINUE READINGPresident Obama Dissolves the Gulf Coast Restoration Task Force
Let’s rewind almost exactly two years to early October 2010. In the wake of the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill, the largest offshore oil spill in U.S. history, President Obama established the Gulf Coast Ecosystem Restoration Task Force, an advisory group of federal and state officials to coordinate federal Gulf Coast restoration activities. The main function of the Task Force was to expedite Gulf restoration by cutting through the bureaucracy that too often delays ...
CONTINUE READINGRoger Cohen Has a Lazy Day
I suppose that it's tough writing two 750-word columns each week; that's why the NYT's Roger Cohen decided to rehash his hatchet job on organic foods in today's paper. In a previous column, Cohen ridiculed fans of organic food, pointing to a Stanford study finding that organic foods were no healthier for human beings than conventionally processed foods. That's fair enough, although the real reason to go organic is the health of the planet, not the the health of the hu...
CONTINUE READINGCarmaHeaven?–One way to improve air quality in LA
Los Angelenos are mostly dreading the return of "Carmageddon" this weekend, when a key section of one of our city's main freeway arteries will once again be shut down for construction. But apparently we should be craving the respite from our city's pervasive air pollution. Researchers at UCLA have just posted an analysis of the effect of the last similar closure on local air quality. From UCLA's release (to which all credit is due, or censure, for the CarmaH...
CONTINUE READINGMcMahon versus Murphy – A Senate Race With High Stakes Environmentally
The Connecticut Senate race between Linda McMahon (R) and Chris Murphy (D) has major environmental implications. McMahon vigorously espouses the standard Republican positions on environment and energy. But Murphy stands out among Democratic Senate candidates in swing states because of his especially strong commitment on the environment. His House website emphasizes that commitment: Our environmental policies are about more than making sure we have clean drinkin...
CONTINUE READINGWhat Drives Anti-Regulatory Public Opinion?
Distrust of regulation has surged recently, but in a one-sided and somewhat surprising way. Here's a graph from Gallup: The Gallup folks speculate that this is due to the GOP reaction to regulatory actions under Obama. That does not seem to fit the graph. You'll notice that the GOP antagonism toward regulation began under Bush at about the time that the Democrats took control of Congress. It has built ever since then, and it continued to build after 2010 when n...
CONTINUE READINGWhat foie gras and low carbon fuels have in common
Many of you may have heard of California's ban on foie gras. The ban was signed into law in 2004 by that notorious hippie, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, but did not take effect until 2012. Fewer of you may be aware of the current litigation over California's low carbon fuel standard (LCFS) program. Litigation concerning both the LCFS program and the foie gras ban advance a rather interesting legal question: can California regulate a product based not on its physical pr...
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