A New Threat to Regional Government & Environmental Quality at Lake Tahoe
Back in the early `70's, Bob Dylan wrote (and sang), "What looks large from a distance, up close ain't never that big." That Dylan lyric came to mind when reports recently emerged of the latest political controversy involving Lake Tahoe. Both nationally and internationally, there's been substantial praise for the pioneering efforts at regional planning and environmental regulation created by the bi-state Tahoe Regional Planning Compact. That Compact, initially agreed ...
CONTINUE READINGCalifornia’s New Budget: Bad For Revitalizing Neighborhoods
California Governor Jerry Brown, apparently emerging from his time warp where Republicans weren't completely radicalized against taxes and government, signed on to an all-cuts budget today, passed with majority numbers in the legislature. His failure to get any of the four Republican votes he had sought means no new taxes and a major victory for the super-minority party. We all know the cuts are devastating to the state's educational system and poor, but what about...
CONTINUE READINGEnvironmental Law and “The Law of the Horse”
"The Law of the Horse" is the title of the (perhaps apocryphal) treatise on the same subject. The point of the reference is that "there's no there there," as Gertrude Stein might have said: the law of the horse would simply be a compendium of contract cases that happened to involve horses, tort cases that happened to involve horses, etc. Is that also true of environmental law? Is it just a compendium of administrative law issues that happen to involve the environmen...
CONTINUE READINGPoor grades on Delta progress
Delta Vision Foundation, the non-profit formed to continue the work of Gov. Schwarzenegger's Delta Vision Task Force, has released its second annual report card on Delta progress. (Legal Planeteer Rick Frank is a member of the Foundation's Board of Directors.) If you had to bring this one home to your parents, you'd likely be grounded for quite some time. The overall record is dismal. In the few spots where the grades look decent, they appear inflated. The Foundation ...
CONTINUE READINGGood news for Hawaiian wetland birds
Regular readers know that we try to report good news when we can. This positive report caught my eye because I recently returned from an extended stay in the islands, where I had the opportunity to see these beautiful birds. Conservation magazine reports on a recent study showing that populations of three endangered Hawaiian wetland birds have rebounded since the 1970s. (Readers with a subscription to Population Ecology can read the full study here.) Populations of ...
CONTINUE READINGCourt allows California to continue developing cap and trade program pending appeal
This just in: Late today, a California appellate court granted the State's request to stay (in other words, lift), pending appeal, the injunction issued by the lower court in Ass'n of Irritated Residents vs. CARB, the environmental justice community challenge to California's work so far under its Global Warming Solutions Act (AB 32). Absent any further appeal or development, this means that California is permitted to continue work on its cap and trade program while the...
CONTINUE READINGSea-Level Rise Rockets Ahead Due to Climate Change
Here's a new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences: An international research team has shown that the rate of sea-level rise along the U.S. Atlantic coast is greater now than at any time in the past 2,000 years and has shown a consistent link between changes in global mean surface temperature and sea level. Sea level rise is one of the threats of climate change, as rising temperatures melt glaciers and ice sheets and put coastal populations at ris...
CONTINUE READINGBrown Administration’s View of Renewable Energy in California by 2020
Governor Brown entered office in January with an ambitious agenda for renewable energy, calling for 20,000 megawatts from renewable sources by 2020, including 12,000 of localized or distributed generation and 8,000 from large-scale development. So how will this vision become a reality? UCLA and Berkeley Law gathered key leaders in California to discuss this issue at a May 23rd event in Sacramento (my blogvertisement for the event is here). Specifically, we discussed po...
CONTINUE READINGHow the Financial Crisis Destroyed Standing Doctrine
Environmental scholars are very familiar -- perhaps too familiar -- with how the constitutionalization of standing doctrine has restricted the ability of environmental groups to challenge agency actions. I've recently read several books about the financial crisis, and it's occurred to me that Wall Street innovation may have made traditional standing doctrine a dead letter. My suggestion centers on the so-called "credit default swap," which was a central cause of the ...
CONTINUE READINGSupreme Court Grants Review in Montana Rivers/Public Trust Case
Understandably, today most U.S. Supreme Court mavens focused their attention on several new opinions the Court issued in key cases--including the major climate change decision (in American Electric Power v. Connecticut) about which Dan, Jonathan and I all blogged earlier today. Not to be overlooked, however, is the fact that today the Court also granted certiorari in the first (and so far, only) environmental case that it will hear and decide in its 2011-12 Term: PPL...
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