Explosion at Fukushima Daiichi No. 1
The Washington Post reports on an explosion at a Japanese nuclear reactor: In what may become the most serious nuclear power crisis since the Chernobyl disaster, the explosion followed large tremors at the Fukushima Daiichi No. 1 reactor Saturday afternoon, injuring four workers who were struggling to get the quake-stricken unit under control.... The full extent of the blast remained unclear, but footage on Japanese television showed that the walls of the building housi...
CONTINUE READINGPublic Policy and Those Pesky Smart Meters
The controversy over “smart” electric meters doesn’t want to go away. The San Francisco Chronicle reports that the President of the California Public Utilities Commission has directed the Pacific Gas & Electric Company to come back within two weeks with a plan for allowing customers to pay some additional “reasonable” amount for the privilege of not using a meter that communicates with the utility wirelessly. Smart meters, wireless or otherwise, allow t...
CONTINUE READINGDim Bulbs (The Sequel)
I did a post last November about the surprising tea party anger regarding energy-efficient light bulbs. The furor seems to be continuing. Here are some quotes from Republican Senators courtesy of EE News: "People in Idaho are just astonished that the federal government is telling them what kind of light bulb to put in their home," Sen. Jim Risch (R-Idaho) said. "You busybodies always want to do something that tell us how to make our lives better," Sen. Rand Paul (R-K...
CONTINUE READING2010 U.S. Solar Market: $6 billion
In 2010, the U.S. solar market grew 67% to $6 billion. PV installations doubled to 878 megawatts. And still, the U.S. continues to be outpaced by the Germans and Italians, with U.S. market share of PV installations falling to 5% of the global market in 2010. (These facts and figures are from the Solar Energy Industry Association's (SEIA's) 2010 Year in Review. The Executive Summary (pdf) is here.) The key graph, in my opinion, is that of US PV installations. Wi...
CONTINUE READINGNew on Ecology Law Currents
Ecology Law Currents, the online companion to Ecology Law Quarterly, has two new articles: CERCLA’s Unrecoverable Natural Resource Damages: Injuries to Cultural Resources and Services, by Sarah Peterman, arguing that CERCLA does not permit recovery of damages for the loss of "cultural services" performed by injured natural resources, notwithstanding the Department of Interior's contrary interpretation. 7th Annual EJ Symposium — Hungry for Justice: Growing an Eq...
CONTINUE READINGLegal Planet turns two
A year ago, Dan declared March 10 the birthday of Legal Planet. As he explained in that post, the blog's actual birthday is indeterminate, but March 10 is close enough and having put it out there we might as well stick with it. When we launched the blog, none of us were sure how long it would go on, how much we would have to say, or whether anyone would be interested. Since we're law professors, it's probably not surprising that it turns out we like to spout off about a...
CONTINUE READINGWhat are the Top 10 Natural Resources Stories?
Lots of folks in legal academia are familiar with Foundation Press' popular Law Stories series; around here on Legal Planet, we are particularly familiar with Environmental Law Stories (pictured right), edited by Richard Lazarus and Oliver Houck, to which Dan and Holly contributed a chapter. It's a very useful book, and I'm a fan. But I couldn't help thinking that we could also use a volume focusing on Natural Resources. Standard environmental law classes focus on...
CONTINUE READINGClimate Change Impacts in China
The received wisdom used to be that climate change would have relatively little impact on China. But that views seems outdated. Like the United States, China is large and geographically diverse; as such, the impacts of climate change vary across the country. For example, the Chinese government reports that the “frequency of heat waves in summer has increased and droughts have worsened in some areas, especially in northern China; heavy precipitation has increased in ...
CONTINUE READINGPeak Oil Prices?
Oil prices are currently being pushed up by uncertainty about supply from the Middle East. Well before that crisis, Deutsche Bank was predicting $175/barrel oil five years from now. Predicting future oil prices is a tricky venture, and the track record for past predictions has been mixed. The two factors that foretell price increases over the long-term are the exhaustion of cheap, easily accessible sources of oil; and increased demand as China and India get into t...
CONTINUE READINGNot even NASA rockets are cooperating with climate scientists these days
I heard renowned climate scientist Dr. James Hansen speak at UCLA last week, and one of his key messages was that we need to get a better handle on the importance and effect of aerosols on the Earth's warming. He was quite excited about the launch of a new NASA satellite that would gather data to tell us more about aerosols and their effects. This morning, that launch failed and the satellite crashed into the southern Pacific. Read the story here and here. A...
CONTINUE READING