The Burgeoning Volume of Environmental Law Scholarship
I've had the impression that, over the time I've been following environmental law, there's been a dramatic increase in the amount of scholarship in the field. I did a search of the Westlaw JLR database for ("environmental regulation" "air pollution" "water pollution" "endangered species") with data restrictions. This search is only an approximation but it should capture a high proportion of environmental articles and not too many others. To the extent there are e...
CONTINUE READINGIowa’s Attack on Animal Rights Groups and the First Amendment
Industrial farmers have a PR problem: large-scale food manufacturing tends to go hand-in-hand with incidents of animal abuse. We can disagree about the pervasiveness of the problem, but it is nevertheless a problem. Iowa's solution? Criminalize the whistleblowers. From time to time, animal rights activists infiltrate corporate agribusinesses and film various abuses, such as pigs crammed in gestation crates or a worker stabbing cows with pitchforks. As the LA Tim...
CONTINUE READINGCultivating Pot A Huge Source Of Greenhouse Gas Emissions
I'm not kidding. And oh the possibilities for bad puns. "Energy Up in Smoke" is the title of a new study that finds that marijuana production in the United States results in 1 percent of all electricity production across the country. One percent of all electricity production is the equivalent of providing electricity to 2 million average size homes. As the New York Times says in its blog on the report, "Don't bogart that megawatt, my friend." In California -- a ...
CONTINUE READINGOf Wolves and Men
It looks like one of the losers in the budget compromise will be the wolf. The Tester-Simpson rider, attached to the compromise federal budget bill, will delist wolves from the federal endangered species list in Montana, Idaho, Washington, Oregon and Utah. Heather Hansen, at CU Boulder, has a detailed blog post on the wolf. The bigger loser here is the integrity of our environmental laws. This rider, a joint effort of Senator Jon Tester (D-Mont.) and Rep. Mike Sim...
CONTINUE READINGRepublicans Hate Their Grandchildren
Eleven days ago, I was relieved that the Administration stood firm on anti-EPA riders, but asked, "what will the level of EPA funding be? If Congress and the White House agree to serious cuts that starve the agency of necessary personnel, then the absence of a rider is a Pyrrhic victory." Well, now we know the answer: One of the hardest hit institutions is the Environmental Protection Agency, whose power Republicans have sought to curtail in recent years through a var...
CONTINUE READINGWill Bombay Choke the Queen’s Necklace?
Marine Drive in Bombay, better known as the Queen's Necklace (pictured), is one of the most beautiful waterfronts in the world. That's why it is so depressing to learn that the Maharahstra state government seems to want to destroy it. Per DNA India, the state's chief minister, Prithviraj Chavan, is meeting with Union Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh to gain approval for the six-lane structure, which Chavan says will be "built on stilts." Yecch. Like most mega...
CONTINUE READINGThe Dying Dead
Can something that's Dead still be dying? It can if it's the Dead Sea and if it's rapidly disappearing. And it is. Check out this piece from this month's Scientific American, which details the disappearance of the Dead Sea -- which is really a highly saline lake -- due to four states (Israel, Jordan, Syria, and the Palestinian Authority (if that counts as a state)) drawing their freshwater supplies from its primary feeder, the Jordan River. How is this for a stati...
CONTINUE READINGWill AB 32 Regulations Move Ahead Despite the Court Ruling?
We've extensively covered the litigation over California's landmark climate change law, AB 32. Now, per the Clean Energy Report, CARB might be able to move ahead with the cap-and-trade regulations anyway: the trial court might very well stay its decision pending appeal, which is not unheard of, and according to the state's attorneys, occurs automatically upon appeal: The order rejected requests made by state attorneys in February to allow the GHG rules to continue to ...
CONTINUE READINGAnother Sane Conservative on Climate
Nancy Stiles is the new Republican State Senator from Portsmouth, New Hampshire. She believes in low government spending and decentralization. Libertarians like her. But importantly, she seems to have not been infected with the climate denial crazy of many in her party. While Republicans in the state Assembly have voted to have New Hampshire secede from the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, the northeast's cap-and-trade plan, Stiles is fighting in the state Se...
CONTINUE READINGPathway to Farm Subsidies
Paul Ryan is one of the great intellectual and political frauds of our time. You don't need to do much more than read through Paul Krugman's and Jonathan Chait's work eviscerating his budget proposal, which carries the Orwellian name of "Pathway to Prosperity." But Legal Planet readers should be aware of something else. If there is one place where progressives and conservatives usually can agree, it is on the issue of farm subsidies, which are not only grotesquely...
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