Video and print materials online from our conference Local Agencies on the Cutting Edge: Emerging Challenges to Local Land Use Authority
On February 11, UCLA Law hosted a symposium, Local Agencies on the Cutting Edge: Emerging Challenges to Local Land Use Authority. This daylong conference addressed important new developments in local land-use law. We now have a webpage devoted to the symposium, including links to video recordings of all the day's sessions, as well as written materials and powerpoint presentations from the event. The day's panels included: -- What does Proposition 26 mean for loca...
CONTINUE READINGPandering to the Right, Or, “That Was Then, This Is Now.”
PAWLENTY: Well, anybody who’s going to run for this office who’s been in an executive position, or may run, has got some clunkers in their record. Laura, mine I think are fewer and less severe than most. As to climate change, or more specifically cap-and-trade, I’ve just come out and admitted it — look, it was a mistake, it was stupid. [...] Everybody in the race, well at least the big names in the race, embraced climate change or cap-and-trade at one point or a...
CONTINUE READINGNinth Circuit Rejects Commerce Clause Challenge to ESA
Aligning itself with four other federal circuits that have addressed the question, the Ninth Circuit has ruled that application of the Endangered Species Act to California's imperiled Delta Smelt doesn't violate the Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution. San Luis & Delta-Mendota Water Authority v. Salazar (http://www.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2011/03/25/10-15192.pdf ) is the latest chapter in the long-running legal battle over whether operation of the...
CONTINUE READINGU.S. House of Representatives v. Modern Science
Nature, one of the two leading scientific journals in the world, has a strongly worded editorial about the recent House hearings on climate change: At a subcommittee hearing on 14 March, anger and distrust were directed at scientists and respected scientific societies. Misinformation was presented as fact, truth was twisted and nobody showed any inclination to listen to scientists, let alone learn from them. It has been an embarrassing display, not just for the Republica...
CONTINUE READINGThe recent court decision blocking California’s scoping plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions: One-stop shopping for recent Legal Planet commentary
Several of the bloggers on Legal Planet have been commenting extensively on the recent California court decision that will block the California Air Resources Board from moving forward with its AB 32 Scoping Plan and related regulations. I've provided links below to a series of our posts on this decision. The court, ruling on a lawsuit brought by environmental justice advocates under the California Environmental Quality Act, found that the ARB's adoption of its scopi...
CONTINUE READINGPolitical Fallout from Japan Hits Germany
According to HuffPo, BERLIN -- German chancellor Angela Merkel's conservatives have suffered a historic defeat in a state ballot after almost six decades in power there, partial results showed Sunday, in an election that amounted to a referendum on the party's stance on nuclear power. The opposition anti-nuclear Greens doubled their voter share in Baden-Wuerttemberg state and seemed poised to win their first-ever state governorship. . . The Greens secured 24 percent of...
CONTINUE READINGJapan Nuclear Update
The NY Times has a very good page showing the current status of each of the six reactors. All of them remain problems in one way or another, either because of the reactors themselves or the spent fuel. The Post also has an interactive, featuring an animated presentation. No one seems to expect a full resolution any time soon. The radioactivity releases are troubling, but every day that goes by without a complete melt-down or other disaster should probably be cons...
CONTINUE READINGThe Melting of Mount Everest
A spectacular and frightening graphic from Christina Larson over at James Fallows' Atlantic blog: Larson posts a photograph that allows you to compare a picture of Mount Everest from 1921 with one from today. Don't look if you don't want to see something sad; as Larson notes, the glacier atop Everest has lost 320 vertical feet of ice sheet in the last 90 years. Take a look. But climate change isn't happening. Nope; not at all....
CONTINUE READINGMight recent events allow Governor Brown to consider a new direction for AB 32 implementation?
My colleague Jonathan Zasloff suggests that environmental justice groups are using litigation to try to get leverage for some sort of compensation or other measures, rather than to actually stop the state's cap-and-trade program for greenhouse gases. I doubt that. But what I do wonder -- with no evidence, but I can speculate wildly on a blog, can't I? -- is whether this litigation actually might start the state on a path away from cap-and-trade. EJ groups have been ve...
CONTINUE READINGCan the Air Resources Board continue to implement measures to reduce greenhouse gases?
One interesting feature of the court decision preventing the state from moving forward with AB 32 is that the court's decision seems to halt implementation of the entire scoping plan. As I'll explain, this is an odd result, and one that may be legally required but doesn't make practical sense. The legal flaw the court found in the scoping plan - and the part of the plan the frustrates the environmental justice organizations that filed the lawsuit - is that the Air Res...
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