C-Change.la and a Sea Change in Climate Change Communication
It has become increasingly clear that in order to address climate change effectively through carbon emissions reduction and adapting to new conditions, we will need new communication tools. Last week, I blogged about a new, groundbreaking climate impact study that projects the impacts of climate change on southern California's communities at unprecedentedly high resolution. What I didn't focus on there is the important work that has gone into communicating those resul...
CONTINUE READINGDC Circuit’s Unanimous Decision to Uphold Greenhouse Gas Rules Across the Board Major Victory for EPA
As Dan just noted, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit -- in a unanimous decision -- handed the U.S. EPA a sweeping victory in upholding across the board four separate components of the agency's rules to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. The opinion can be found here. A little background is in order here. The U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Massachusetts v. EPA directed the Environmental Protection Agency to decide whether greenhouse gases are pollutant...
CONTINUE READINGNEWSFLASH — Court Upholds Greenhouse Gas Rules
From E & E news: The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit announced it had denied industry petitions seeking invalidation of the so-called endangerment finding, the agency's original conclusion that greenhouse gases pose a health risk and should be regulated under the Clean Air Act, and the "tailpipe" rule that set greenhouse gas emissions standards for cars and light-duty trucks beginning with 2012 models. The three-judge panel outright dismis...
CONTINUE READINGSupreme Court Grants Review in Two Clean Water Act Cases From Ninth Circuit
This morning the U.S. Supreme Court granted certiorari in two high-profile Clean Water Act cases from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. The justices simultaneously denied review in a major federalism decision, also from the Ninth Circuit, involving an industry challenge to a California Air Resources Board's regulation requiring ships to use low-polluting fuels near the California coast. I previewed all three cases in a recent post here at Legal Planet. Briefly, Lo...
CONTINUE READINGPutting a Cap on the Green Paradox
The Green Paradox holds that emission control measures scheduled for the future can backfire. Foreseeing a smaller market in the future, fossil fuel sellers decide to unload more of their reserves now by cutting prices. A recent report from Resources for the Future provides more details if you're interested (though the details don't matter for the point that I'm going to make): We contribute to this literature by developing a richer theoretical model that takes accou...
CONTINUE READINGRio+20 and Network Governance
Although I was in Rio last week, I was miles away from the actual negotiations, both geographically and metaphorically. But, as it turned out, the side events were at least as important as the actual negotiations. This is an interesting phenomenon. Some big international negotiations like WTO meetings attract protesters, but the big environmental negotiations form the nucleus of a cluster of events by NGOs, universities, and businesses. The events include academic c...
CONTINUE READINGUCLA and City of Los Angeles Publish First-Ever Detailed Long-Term Climate Forecast for a City’s Neighborhoods
A team led by UCLA researcher Dr. Alex Hall has released a study that projects temperature trends by neighborhood within the Los Angeles region for the mid-21st century. The report is the most sophisticated regional study of climate trends that has ever been developed, and is based on climate modeling two orders of magnitude higher in resolution than previous models. The research was supported by the City of Los Angeles and the U.S. Department of Energy through ARR...
CONTINUE READINGSupreme Court Declares Juries Responsible for Assessing Criminal Fines in Environmental Enforcement Cases
The Supreme Court on Thursday handed down its third and final environmental law decision of its current Term. (The case, Southern Union v. United States, is also significant for being the first criminal environmental enforcement case in the Court's history) In a 6-3 decision, the justices ruled that criminal penalties sought by federal prosecutors in a toxic spill case must be assessed by a jury, rather than the trial judge. I detailed the issues raised by Southern Un...
CONTINUE READINGIn the Supreme Court’s Crosshairs: the Ninth Circuit’s Environmental Jurisprudence
All eyes will be on the U.S. Supreme Court this week, as the justices conclude their current Term and, among other things, issue their long-awaited decision(s) on the constitutionality of the newly-enacted federal healthcare law. But the Supreme Court also has some other, key decisions to make as to whether to take up four controversial environmental cases from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. In each of those cases, the Ninth Circuit reached a "pro-e...
CONTINUE READINGCalifornia Court of Appeal Upholds AB 32 Scoping Plan for Greenhouse Gas Reduction
Today, the California Court of Appeal rejected an appeal by environmental justice advocates seeking to scuttle the California Air Resources Board's AB 32 Scoping Plan. EJ advocates objected to the Scoping Plan's adoption of a cap-and-trade program to achieve some of the greenhouse gas reductions required under the landmark California law AB 32. Their primary concern is that the program will not adequately reduce the emissions of co-pollutants that harm public healt...
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