Brown 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...
CONTINUE READINGYouTube persuasion
Why do some messages persuade, and others don't? What is good science messaging? How can we reach new audiences about the importance of sustainable resource management? If you're interested in these questions, you might like this video on overfishing, created by a couple of UCLA undergrads as extra credit for a class in oceanography. I love it, and so does their professor. If the Whole Foods Parking Lot video can go viral, maybe this one can, too. And check o...
CONTINUE READINGConn. v. AEP: Never Underestimate Congressional Power to Do Damage
Dan's and Rick's posts very helpfully summarize the impacts of the Court's decision today. (They were also probably written at the same time: great minds think alike). But I'm a little more pessimistic than Dan is concerning Congressional action. He suggests that the decision makes it more complex for Congress to repeal EPA jurisdiction since doing so would restore the federal common law claims. I confess that the reasoning here eludes me. Any statute repealing E...
CONTINUE READINGSupreme Court Rejects States’ Climate Change Nuisance Lawsuit
The Supreme Court today issued its long-awaited decision in an important climate change case, American Electric Power v. Connecticut. http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/10pdf/10-174.pdf As expected, the Court rejected a public nuisance lawsuit that a coalition of states and private land trusts had brought against the owners of Midwestern coal-fired power plants, challenging their massive greenhouse gas emissions on public nuisance grounds. In a unanimous opinion ...
CONTINUE READINGThe American Electric Power Case
The Supreme Court decided the AEP case. The jurisdictional issues (standing and the political question doctrine) got punted. The Court said that the lower court rulings were affirmed by an equally divided court. So far as I know, this is the first time that the Court has ever done that and then proceeded to a ruling on the merits. (It would seem more appropriate to dismiss cert. as improvidently granted rather than issue an opinion on the merits.) This is actuall...
CONTINUE READINGA Threat to National Security
Many people are unaware of the problem or else in denial, but America faces a serious, insidious threat from a source known to experts as al Qaerbon. Working quietly, al Qaerbon has laid plans to seize miles of America's coasts, flood farms and cities, cut off needed water in dry areas, and even undermine the economies of our trading partners and promote unrest in the Middle East. Al Qaerbon plays the long game, laying the groundwork now for harm years or even decade...
CONTINUE READINGA Note to Environmental Scholars
...and to all scholars, really. You are not an explorer. Now that the academic year is over and I'm finally getting the time to write, I've been looking through scholarly abstracts. In literally dozens of them, the author says that he or she is "exploring" a particular issue or topic. What's wrong with that? It serves as a substitute for a well-stated thesis. The point of explorers isn't that they are exploring something: it's that they have found somethi...
CONTINUE READINGThe Subsidy Saga Continues
Two days ago, I criticized Democrats for failing to support Tom Coburn's proposal to eliminate the infamous ethanol "blender" subsidy, hiding behind procedural objections. Well, it turns out either that they had a change of heart, or the procedural objections were real: The Senate voted 73-27 Thursday to kill a major tax break that benefits the ethanol industry, handing a political win to a bipartisan group of lawmakers that call the incentive needless and expensive....
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