The Case for Cap-and-Trade
Dan asked for a vote, and being a good Legal Planetary citizen, I responded -- voting very reluctantly for cap-and-trade. The biggest difficulty, as is the case with most polls, lies in the phrasing of the question: "all things considered" what is "the best strategy" for controlling greenhouse gases. The problem with this locution -- perhaps unavoidable -- is that while a carbon tax might be the best overall strategy, cap-and-trade is more feasible politically. I...
CONTINUE READINGWhat is the Best Approach to Controlling Carbon? You Be the Judge.
There's a lot of disagreement about the best approach to controlling carbon. We thought it might be a good idea to find out what you, our readers, think about the issue. Here's a quick poll: [polldaddy poll=5632574]...
CONTINUE READINGNice to know I’m sober
Today the Supreme Court denied certiorari in the case known to that Court as Stewart & Jasper Orchards v. Salazar. So why the headline? This is the commerce clause challenge to ESA protection for the Delta smelt, rejected by the Ninth Circuit this past spring under the name San Luis & Delta-Mendota Water Authority v. Salazar. At the time I expressed confidence that the Court would "leave this case alone." Ten days ago, when co-blogger Rick Frank and I appeared ...
CONTINUE READINGMore On the Republican Anti-Fact Shield
So after I posted my tantrum about George Will the other day, I felt a little guilty. Maybe I had been too hard on The Tory Bowtie. After all, maybe his putting "facts" in scare quotes was just a slip. Then I saw this piece on the Washington Post editorial page by Republican pollster Ed Rogers, on what the Republican base wants from a candidate. His words, not mine: Even though Cain won’t be the nominee, his candidacy tells us a lot about the psychology of GOP ...
CONTINUE READINGA Completely Uninteresting Story
The Wall Street Journal editorial board claims that California's new cap-and-trade regulations will cost each consumer $3,800 a year and calls it creeping Stalinism. As my UCLA (and UCLAW!) colleague Matt Kahn gently and genially points out, the Journal's editors are engaging in cranial-rectal fusion. In other news, dog bites man, the sun rises in the east, and the weather is better in California....
CONTINUE READINGTrolling for Anti-Environmental Plaintiffs
A reader sent me a an email from the Coalition of Energy Users trying to find plaintiffs for a challenge to AB 32 implementation. CEU claims to be a grassroots group that does not have a deep-pocket funding source, and that may be true. On the other hand, its interests are so precisely aligned with the oil and coal industries that it's hard not to wonder a bit. (For example, they want to abolish the California air board entirely, and they are vehemently opposed to ...
CONTINUE READINGWhen Can We Attribute Extreme Events to Climate Change?
Moscow suffered from a severe heat wave in the summer of 2010, with temperatures reaching 101 degrees and an average temperature 14 degrees higher than normal for July. What are the odds that the heat wave was due to climate change? RealClimate presents the results of an analysis that was just published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science. The analysis indicates that there was an 80% probability that climate change caused the heat wave. A previo...
CONTINUE READING(What Remains Of) The Conservative Mind Melts Down
Once upon a time, George Will had a reputation as the thinking person's conservative. No more. He's not only a climate denier, but a couple of weeks ago he smeared Elizabeth Warren with a kind of red-baiting that I haven't seen since the fall of the Berlin Wall. Now he's at it again, sort of. And what says speaks volumes about what remains of the conservative mind. His October 28 column has him in right-wing enforcer mode, attacking Mitt Romney for being an u...
CONTINUE READINGHow Plaintiffs Can Win More Takings Cases: A Proposal for California
I've never been particularly sympathetic to regulatory takings claims; like many on the left of center, I'm wary of expanding a constitutional doctrine with the potential to severely injure good land-use planning and reconstitute Lochnerism. That said, it's hard to look at the reports of many takings cases without getting a strong sense that a lot of property owners are, to use a technical term, getting screwed. One might find a good example in Landgate v. Califo...
CONTINUE READINGNew Voices in Environmental Law
This blog features some work by some junior scholars and some established ones. One thing that we've tried to do, from time to time, is to direct attention to new electronic sources on environmental law. In that spirit, here some blogs and twitter feeds featuring junior scholars that we think are worth a look: Matt Festa and Ken Stahl: The Land Use Profs blog Brigham Daniels, Blake Hudson, Dave Owen, Lincoln Davies, Hannah Wiseman: The Environmental Law Profs bl...
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