Unexpected Environmental Heroes
Mammoth Lakes is one of the more popular resort areas in California’s Sierra Nevada, and also one of the more beautiful. It’s popular in part because it as at one of the low points in the Sierra Nevada, allowing for relatively easy backcountry access to both the east and west sides of the mountains. (That is one of the reasons I am here right now!) While much of the Sierra has rugged peaks between 11,000 and 14,000 feet high, here at Mammoth, the crest of the S...
CONTINUE READING“Too Darn Hot”:The Summer of 2011 and the New Normal
DotEarth, the NY Times environmental blog, has a nice posting about how the current heat wave fits into climate-change predictions. It seems clear that the "summer of 2011 is emblematic of the new climatological norms that are emerging as conditions neatly echo longstanding projections of the consequences of steadily raising the concentration of heat-trapping greenhouse gases." Maybe we should change the national anthem to the old Cole Porter song, "It's Too Darn Ho...
CONTINUE READINGA New Environmental Journal
Transnational Environmental Law (TEL) is a peer-reviewed journal dedicated to the study of environmental law and governance beyond the state. It approaches legal and regulatory developments with an interest in the contribution of non-state actors and an awareness of the multi-level governance context in which contemporary environmental law unfolds in a global context. (Full disclosure: I'm on the editorial board.) The first issue will include contributions by, among...
CONTINUE READINGSome Worried Thoughts About Congressional Paralysis
Congress seems on the point of collapse as a viable branch of government. The budget crisis in Washington may yet cause a government shut-down and interrupt basic obligations such as payment of Social Security. In the past, raising the debt ceiling has been routine, but such routine activities have now become nearly impossible. Nate Silver points out that this is not an isolated phenomenon: "Just 23 bills have been signed into law by the president this year, a stagge...
CONTINUE READINGBring Out Your Dead!
A current chant of anti-regulatory zealots is that EPA's programs only prevent "statistical deaths," rather than real deaths. Apparently, they want EPA to provide something like Monty Python's "bring out your dead" scene, which is pictured on the left. Michael Livermore has a good response to this line of argument in Grist: The science showing the harmful effects of particulate matter, or soot, is very strong. The microscopic bits spewed out of smokestacks around ...
CONTINUE READINGEPA finalizes mountaintop removal guidance
Cross-posted at CPRBlog and The Berkeley Blog. After a three-and-a-half month delay for White House review, EPA has finalized its guidance for review of mountaintop removal mining permits in Appalachia. I needn't have worried that the White House would roll EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson on this one. The final guidance maintains the strong stand EPA took last April when it issued the interim guidance it finalized today. The thrust of this final version, like the interi...
CONTINUE READINGJerry Brown’s Push for Local Renewable Power
Local renewables – those photovoltaics, small wind turbines, etc. on people’s roofs, and in public spaces close to demand – how big of a role can they play in our renewable energy future? Berkeley and UCLA law schools wrote about that topic in In Our Backyard, and California’s Governor Jerry Brown made this question a major part of his campaign for office. Brown noted that in order to meet the state’s renewable power standards, there would need to be about 20,0...
CONTINUE READINGUK report: behavioral change takes more than a nudge
Cross-posted at CPRBlog. No one seems to like the idea of regulation these days. Nudges, alternatives that try to get people to voluntarily alter their behavior by changing the context in which they make decisions, have been widely touted as a better approach. Cass Sunstein, Obama's "regulatory czar" in the Office of Management and Budget, is a leading proponent of the "nudging" idea, and the co-author of a popular book promoting the concept that people should be gently...
CONTINUE READINGThe Real Mistake in Dominion Theology
At about this time last year I wrote a post on dominion theology, a type of Christian belief that, when it comes to the environment, takes the notion of humanity's rule over nature very seriously and sees humanity's rule as something close to absolute. It comes from the passage in Genesis 1:26, which reads: And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cat...
CONTINUE READINGWhitebark pine in ESA limbo
Cross-posted at The Berkeley Blog. Today the Fish and Wildlife Service announced that the whitebark pine, an iconic tree of the high-elevation American west, qualifies for listing as an endangered or threatened species. The combined impacts of disease, insect infestation, climate change, and fire suppression mean that the whitebark pine could disappear within a couple of its generations. But the pine won't be listed just yet, because too many other species are ahead ...
CONTINUE READING