Supreme Court Rejects States’ Climate Change Nuisance Lawsuit
The Supreme Court today issued its long-awaited decision in an important climate change case, American Electric Power v. Connecticut. http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/10pdf/10-174.pdf As expected, the Court rejected a public nuisance lawsuit that a coalition of states and private land trusts had brought against the owners of Midwestern coal-fired power plants, challenging their massive greenhouse gas emissions on public nuisance grounds. In a unanimous opinion ...
CONTINUE READINGThe American Electric Power Case
The Supreme Court decided the AEP case. The jurisdictional issues (standing and the political question doctrine) got punted. The Court said that the lower court rulings were affirmed by an equally divided court. So far as I know, this is the first time that the Court has ever done that and then proceeded to a ruling on the merits. (It would seem more appropriate to dismiss cert. as improvidently granted rather than issue an opinion on the merits.) This is actuall...
CONTINUE READINGA Threat to National Security
Many people are unaware of the problem or else in denial, but America faces a serious, insidious threat from a source known to experts as al Qaerbon. Working quietly, al Qaerbon has laid plans to seize miles of America's coasts, flood farms and cities, cut off needed water in dry areas, and even undermine the economies of our trading partners and promote unrest in the Middle East. Al Qaerbon plays the long game, laying the groundwork now for harm years or even decade...
CONTINUE READINGA Note to Environmental Scholars
...and to all scholars, really. You are not an explorer. Now that the academic year is over and I'm finally getting the time to write, I've been looking through scholarly abstracts. In literally dozens of them, the author says that he or she is "exploring" a particular issue or topic. What's wrong with that? It serves as a substitute for a well-stated thesis. The point of explorers isn't that they are exploring something: it's that they have found somethi...
CONTINUE READINGThe Subsidy Saga Continues
Two days ago, I criticized Democrats for failing to support Tom Coburn's proposal to eliminate the infamous ethanol "blender" subsidy, hiding behind procedural objections. Well, it turns out either that they had a change of heart, or the procedural objections were real: The Senate voted 73-27 Thursday to kill a major tax break that benefits the ethanol industry, handing a political win to a bipartisan group of lawmakers that call the incentive needless and expensive....
CONTINUE READINGRethinking NRC Policy
An NRC task force seems to be heading for some significant policy shifts in light of the Fukushima reactor failures, including tighter requirements for re-licensing and reduced reliance on voluntary guidelines. The two commissioners on the task force seem to be reassessing the Commission's previously nonchalant attitude toward extreme events. ClimateWire reports: NRC policy has not considered the risk that a natural disaster could cause an extended loss of outside el...
CONTINUE READINGSome Intriguing Statistics
I was recently paging through the new 2011-2012 Statistical Abstract of the United States (strange folk, we professors), and came up with some intriguing tidbits that I wanted to pass on: In the past fifty years, total water withdrawals have increased by 150% Carbon monoxide, ozone, sulfur dioxide, particulates and nitrogen dioxide all declined from 2001-2007. The states with the highest toxic chemical releases in 2008 were Alaska (1st by a big margin), Indiana, Ohio...
CONTINUE READINGNational Academies Press makes reports available for free
Early this month, the National Academies Press, which publishes National Research Council reports like this recent one on America's Climate Choices, announced that it will make all pdf versions of its publications available for free downloads. Anyone who does research on environmental science or policy (among other topics) should be happy to hear this news. NRC reports are often key sources of "consensus" scientific opinion and/or important documents at the interface of ...
CONTINUE READINGNostradamus, I Ain’t
On Friday, I predicted that Senate Republicans would side with Grover Norquist against Tom Coburn and block repeal of one of the egregious ethanol subsidies now polluting both our tax code and our country. Well, so much for that: most Senate Republicans did the right thing and voted to remove the subsidy. In this case, it was the Democrats who voted to maintain the subsidy, along with farm state Republicans. Senate Democratic leaders argued that somehow the Cobu...
CONTINUE READINGAir Resources Board Releases New Environmental Assessment of Cap and Trade to Comply with Judge’s Order
The California Air Resources Board (CARB) is covering all its bases in responding to a judge's order that CARB violated the California Enviornmental Quality Act (CEQA) in adopting its scoping plan to implement AB 32 (the state's climate change legislation). As I reported last week, CARB has won an order from the appeals court allowing the state to go forward in implementing its challenged cap and trade program. But to hedge its bets, the staff of the Ca...
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