Environmental Law and “The Law of the Horse”
"The Law of the Horse" is the title of the (perhaps apocryphal) treatise on the same subject. The point of the reference is that "there's no there there," as Gertrude Stein might have said: the law of the horse would simply be a compendium of contract cases that happened to involve horses, tort cases that happened to involve horses, etc. Is that also true of environmental law? Is it just a compendium of administrative law issues that happen to involve the environmen...
CONTINUE READINGPoor grades on Delta progress
Delta Vision Foundation, the non-profit formed to continue the work of Gov. Schwarzenegger's Delta Vision Task Force, has released its second annual report card on Delta progress. (Legal Planeteer Rick Frank is a member of the Foundation's Board of Directors.) If you had to bring this one home to your parents, you'd likely be grounded for quite some time. The overall record is dismal. In the few spots where the grades look decent, they appear inflated. The Foundation ...
CONTINUE READINGGood news for Hawaiian wetland birds
Regular readers know that we try to report good news when we can. This positive report caught my eye because I recently returned from an extended stay in the islands, where I had the opportunity to see these beautiful birds. Conservation magazine reports on a recent study showing that populations of three endangered Hawaiian wetland birds have rebounded since the 1970s. (Readers with a subscription to Population Ecology can read the full study here.) Populations of ...
CONTINUE READINGCourt allows California to continue developing cap and trade program pending appeal
This just in: Late today, a California appellate court granted the State's request to stay (in other words, lift), pending appeal, the injunction issued by the lower court in Ass'n of Irritated Residents vs. CARB, the environmental justice community challenge to California's work so far under its Global Warming Solutions Act (AB 32). Absent any further appeal or development, this means that California is permitted to continue work on its cap and trade program while the...
CONTINUE READINGSea-Level Rise Rockets Ahead Due to Climate Change
Here's a new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences: An international research team has shown that the rate of sea-level rise along the U.S. Atlantic coast is greater now than at any time in the past 2,000 years and has shown a consistent link between changes in global mean surface temperature and sea level. Sea level rise is one of the threats of climate change, as rising temperatures melt glaciers and ice sheets and put coastal populations at ris...
CONTINUE READINGBrown Administration’s View of Renewable Energy in California by 2020
Governor Brown entered office in January with an ambitious agenda for renewable energy, calling for 20,000 megawatts from renewable sources by 2020, including 12,000 of localized or distributed generation and 8,000 from large-scale development. So how will this vision become a reality? UCLA and Berkeley Law gathered key leaders in California to discuss this issue at a May 23rd event in Sacramento (my blogvertisement for the event is here). Specifically, we discussed po...
CONTINUE READINGHow the Financial Crisis Destroyed Standing Doctrine
Environmental scholars are very familiar -- perhaps too familiar -- with how the constitutionalization of standing doctrine has restricted the ability of environmental groups to challenge agency actions. I've recently read several books about the financial crisis, and it's occurred to me that Wall Street innovation may have made traditional standing doctrine a dead letter. My suggestion centers on the so-called "credit default swap," which was a central cause of the ...
CONTINUE READINGSupreme Court Grants Review in Montana Rivers/Public Trust Case
Understandably, today most U.S. Supreme Court mavens focused their attention on several new opinions the Court issued in key cases--including the major climate change decision (in American Electric Power v. Connecticut) about which Dan, Jonathan and I all blogged earlier today. Not to be overlooked, however, is the fact that today the Court also granted certiorari in the first (and so far, only) environmental case that it will hear and decide in its 2011-12 Term: PPL...
CONTINUE READINGYouTube persuasion
Why do some messages persuade, and others don't? What is good science messaging? How can we reach new audiences about the importance of sustainable resource management? If you're interested in these questions, you might like this video on overfishing, created by a couple of UCLA undergrads as extra credit for a class in oceanography. I love it, and so does their professor. If the Whole Foods Parking Lot video can go viral, maybe this one can, too. And check o...
CONTINUE READINGConn. v. AEP: Never Underestimate Congressional Power to Do Damage
Dan's and Rick's posts very helpfully summarize the impacts of the Court's decision today. (They were also probably written at the same time: great minds think alike). But I'm a little more pessimistic than Dan is concerning Congressional action. He suggests that the decision makes it more complex for Congress to repeal EPA jurisdiction since doing so would restore the federal common law claims. I confess that the reasoning here eludes me. Any statute repealing E...
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