What EPA should do with its delayed performance standards for GHGs
On September 15, EPA announced that it would not meet its September deadline for proposing performance standards for greenhouse gas (GHG) pollution from power plants. (That is the second delay; this proposal was originally scheduled for July 2011.) Some are asking if this delay is a big deal, and several environmental leaders sent President Obama a letter requesting the prompt release of the new standards. These would be New Source Performance Standards under Section 11...
CONTINUE READINGArguing Climate by Analogy, or: Stupid Like a Fox
Bill Clinton says that Republican climate-change deniers make the United States "look like a joke": "I mean, it makes us -- we look like a joke, right?" Clinton said. "You can't win the nomination of one of the major parties in the country if you admit that scientists are right?" Kathleen Parker, in a thoughtful column, explains why this might not work. Parker's conservatism rejects the Know-Nothingism now required in the GOP, but she outlines an important piece of the...
CONTINUE READINGThe Last Standing Article You’ll Ever Have to Read
O.K., so the headline is a little misleading -- or to put it more bluntly, just plain wrong in three different ways. First, unless you're a law professor or maybe a D.C. lawyers, you'll never have to read an article about standing doctrine at all, because you'll never need to worry about the arcane doctrine that governs when citizens can challenge government actions in federal court. Second, if you are a law professor, you'll be faced with an unending stream of article...
CONTINUE READINGThe Ozone Rule: What Sunstein Didn’t Say
On September 2, Cass Sunstein wrote a letter to Lisa Jackson about the ozone rule, "requesting" that EPA withdraw the regulation. Beyond the fact that it was written at all, the letter is remarkable for its significant silences: Although the letter notes that the rule was based on science that is five years old, it does not argue that more recent evidence would favor a higher ozone level, let alone justify leaving the Bush Administration's ozone level (based on even ...
CONTINUE READINGThe Next Generation of Greenwashing?
After my post concerning paper and plastic bags appeared, LegalPlanet was the recipient of a robo-comment from the Sustainable Forestry Initiative, an industry-backed group that I suggested was greenwashing bad forest practices. SFI now says that it has cleaned up its act without ever acknowledging that the act was bad in the first place. (i.e. "I didn't do it, and I'll never do it again."). You can look for yourself. Why am I so skeptical of this group?...
CONTINUE READINGMeaningful Parking Reform Dead in California (For Now)
AB 710, the eminently sensible parking reform bill, died a sad death in the State Senate during the last-minute frenzy on bills last week. The bill would have prevented local governments from maintaining excessively high parking minimums for development projects located near transit stops, unless they can document a need for high parking requirements. Of course, developers could add more parking as the market requires, but gone would be the mindless local mandates. ...
CONTINUE READINGIf Textualism Isn’t Dead, It’s Badly Wounded
This one is too good not to blog. Strictly speaking, it's an immigration case, but it has interesting implications for all statutes and especially environmental ones. Jawid Habibi is a lawful resident alien, but not someone you'd want to hang around with. He was convicted of domestic misdemeanor battery in California, and then received a 365-day sentence pursuant to state law. Then ICE wanted to deport him under 8 U.S.C. § 1101(a)(43)(F), which allows deportatio...
CONTINUE READINGPaper or Plastic…or Neither?
Paul Koretz is a Los Angeles City Councilmember who represents most of the city's west side (including UCLA) and large chunks of the San Fernando Valley. And he's got a proposal that environmentalists love: Hoping to reduce the billions of grocery bags circulating throughout the city, an L.A. councilman Tuesday called for a sweeping ban on single-use paper and plastic bags. By including paper bags in the ban, the proposal goes beyond similar measures taken recentl...
CONTINUE READINGCEQA and Infill: A Good Year in California
Yes, the last-minute CEQA bills that Rick detailed were controversial. Yes, the bills carving out an expedited process for a sports stadium and $100 million projects, as Eric discussed, make many people question the process. But for those who care about climate change and infill, these bills will likely lead to better environmental outcomes than the traditional CEQA process would have produced. And they certainly offer more for environmentalists than critics seem to ac...
CONTINUE READINGMajor, Proposed CEQA Amendments Sent to California Governor Jerry Brown
In the waning hours of its just-concluded session, the California Legislature passed and sent to Governor Jerry Brown a package of bills that, if signed into law by Brown, will represent the most significant amendments to the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) in many years. I believe it's likely Brown will approve some or all of them. My colleague, Berkeley Law Professor Eric Biber, has previously commented on one of the bills currently on Governor Brown's d...
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