The War Against the Environment
Salon has a recent article entitled, "The Worst Anti-Environmental Congress Ever?" The answer is definitely yes. As someone who has lived through the Gingrich and DeLay eras in Congress, I can say without hesitation that the current House of Representatives is far, far worse. A complete listing of anti-environmental votes in the House can be found here. The riders on the current EPA and Interior appropriations bill tell the tale, as the LA Times reports: If a mo...
CONTINUE READINGGreen litigation in China today
For those interested in the state of environmental litigation in China, China Dialogue, a bilingual site on China's environment, ran an excellent series of articles last month on the topic. I opened the series with an article entitled "Green litigation in China today." Here is an excerpt. Environmental litigation is difficult business in China. Even as the country enters its 12th Five-Year Plan period, with perhaps the most extensive set of top-down environmental and...
CONTINUE READINGSome Thoughts About Environmental Disasters
In an environmental disaster, a disaster causes environmental harm, environmental change causes an acute risk to humans, or both take place. Examples include the BP Oil Spill, the London killer for of 1952, the 2003 European heat wave, and the 2011 Japanese tsunami. Climate change will intensify the connection between disaster issues and the environment. Given the interwoven nature of disasters and environment, we should consider what environmental law and disaster...
CONTINUE READINGHow Do You Solve a Problem Like Conservative White Men? Ask the Ol’ Perfesser
Dave Roberts wants to know. Roberts alludes to a recent survey showing that conservative white men are the most likely group to be climate deniers. (We can put this in the "knock-me-over-with-a-feather" department, although it would be interesting to see how this works with conservative white women). More interestingly, the study (with assistance from Roberts) references some reasons for this trend, including "social dominance orientation," "system-justifying te...
CONTINUE READINGEverything You Wanted to Know About Deepwater Horizon But Were Afraid to Ask
NOAA has put together a very helpful bibliography of peer-reviewed research on the oil spill, Deepwater Horizon: A Preliminary Bibliography of Published Research and Expert Commentary. It includes peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters, technical reports released by scientific agencies and institutions, and editorials published in peer-reviewed journals. The peer-reviewed publications and technical reports in this bibliography are sorted into three subject ca...
CONTINUE READINGGray wolf update: rider upheld and Wyoming delisting a step closer
A few months ago, Rhead summarized litigation over the US Fish and Wildlife Service's multiple attempts to remove the gray wolf from the list of endangered and threatened species, and noted environmental groups' filing of a challenge to the appropriations rider which called for FWS to re-delist (is that a word?) the wolf in Montana and Idaho. This week brought two new developments: 1) Judge Molloy upheld the delisting rider; and 2) FWS agreed to approve Wyoming's wolf...
CONTINUE READINGComparing the future of marriage equality and climate change policy
A little under 15 years ago (Sept. 21, 1996) President Clinton signed the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which prohibited same-sex marriage for federal purposes. Just over a year later, global negotiators agreed to the Kyoto Protocol to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, which was intended to create an international framework to control greenhouse gases. However, the US has yet to ratify the Protocol, and domestic legislation to implement cap-and-trade r...
CONTINUE READINGChina and the Environment: Some Progress on Lead Pollution
It’s a pleasure to be joining the excellent group here at Legal Planet. My focus will largely be on issues related to China and its environmental and energy challenges. I returned to the U.S. last month after seven years working in China on environmental protection and legal reform (mostly for the Natural Resources Defense Council). Over the last few years, as with most things in China, the developments in the environmental, climate, and energy arenas have moved i...
CONTINUE READINGEPA to Continue Emissions Trading in Place of Clean Air Interstate Rule
With the success of the 1990 cap and trade program for sulfur dioxide (the major cause of acid rain), cap and trade has become one of the dominant regulatory means to control air pollution in the U.S. And, of course, cap and trade remains one of the central mechanisms to control greenhouse gases in those jurisdictions seeking to control such emissions economy-wide, like the European Union and California. But domestic efforts to control sulfur dioxide and nitrous ox...
CONTINUE READINGThird time not the charm for Columbia River salmon BiOp
U.S. District Judge James Redden has once again found the National Marine Fisheries Service's Biological Opinion for operations of the Columbia River hydropower system inadequate to satisfy the Endangered Species Act. This is the third time in a decade that Judge Redden has been asked to review a Columbia River BiOp, the third presidential administration to try its hand at a BiOp for the system, and the third time Judge Redden has found NMFS's efforts insufficient. In 2...
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