Supreme Court won’t hear critical habitat cases
Cross-posted at CPRBlog. The Supreme Court today denied certiorari on two Endangered Species Act cases, Arizona Cattle Growers Association v. Salazar and Home Builders Association of Northern California v. US Fish and Wildlife Service. The cases were considered together because they raise the same issue: how the economic impacts of critical habitat designation should be calculated. Development and extraction interests hoped the Court would use the cases to force the U.S...
CONTINUE READINGCounting the Time (A Whimsical Thought Experiment)
Our economic and political institutions press us to take the short view. So does our culture: our calendars go out only one year. Would our psychology of time change if we adopted another measure? As a thought experiment, imagine changing the basic unit from a year to millenium, which we could abbreviate as an M (pronounced "em"). Then we'd have the following system of units: 1 kiloM is a million years. 1 M is a thousand years. 1 deci-M is a century. 1 centi-...
CONTINUE READINGGood news? Yes, even this week
It's been a pretty bad week from an environmental perspective. The House Republicans have dominated the news, passing a continuing resolution for the rest of FY '11 that would gut environmental programs, block implementation of anti-pollution and species protection requirements, yet make essentially no dent in the national debt. (For commentary on the continuing resolution see Peter Lehner's post at NRDC's Switchboard blog.) But it's not all doom and gloom out there. ...
CONTINUE READINGWild horses in Ecology Law Currents
Ecology Law Currents, the online companion to Ecology Law Quarterly, has just published an article sharply criticizing the Bureau of Land Management's implementation of the Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act. Here's the editors' synopsis: Currents has just published a touching and fascinating article on wild horse and burro removal from federal lands entitled "A National Injustice: the Federal Government's Systematic Removal and Eradication of an American Icon" by...
CONTINUE READINGJudge Feldman is still mad
Cross-posted at CPRBlog. You may remember Judge Martin Feldman from his decisions last summer enjoining enforcement of Interior's first effort at a deepwater drilling moratorium, and more recently declaring that the Department must pay the legal fees of the plaintiffs in that case because it was in contempt of the injunction order. (For my take on those decisions see here and here.) No doubt the Department wished it could just slink out of the Gulf and never have to fa...
CONTINUE READINGA New Thought on Smart Growth
The Public Policy Institute of California just released its new report on SB 375, California's smart growth law. I'm still working my way through it, and at the beginning, it seems pretty boilerplate. For example, it notes that three things California can do to reduce emissions are "Higher-density development, particularly in areas well-served by transit; "Investments in alternatives to solo driving, such as transit, walking, biking, and carpooling; and "Pricing ...
CONTINUE READINGKeeping the “Benefits” in Cost-Benefit Analysis
The business community is apparently souring on cost-benefit analysis, for the simple reason that cost-benefit analysis requires a consideration of the benefits of regulation. From as strictly business point of view, it's really only the costs that matter, and cost-benefit analysis is good only to the extent that it disfavors regulation. For instance, Republicans have been touting a consultant's report for SBA that completely leaves out the benefits and gives only a ...
CONTINUE READINGIs this any way to run a democracy?
It isn't exactly news that the U.S. Senate is an anti-majoritarian institution. The filibuster, which effectively allows 41 Senators to block action, gets a lot of attention. But much worse is the "hold," which lets a single senator stand in the way of a bill or nomination. According to the Senate's glossary, a hold is essentially an informal filibuster threat: An informal practice by which a Senator informs his or her floor leader that he or she does not wish a particu...
CONTINUE READINGCounting the cost of coal
The Center for Health and the Global Environment at Harvard Medical School has a new report sort of out on the life-cycle costs of coal production and combustion. I say "sort of" out because the only document I've been able to find is a brief summary, without methods or references, posted by Ken Ward at the Coal Tattoo blog. The summary says that the full report "appears in the January 2011 issue of the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences," but a search of the Ann...
CONTINUE READINGPreview of Coming Attractions: American Electric Power v. State of Connecticut
The U.S. Supreme Court recently announced the scheduling of oral arguments in the biggest (actually, the only) environmental case of its current Term: American Electric Power v. State of Connecticut. The justices will hear arguments on April 19th, and render their decision in this major climate change case by the end of June. Already, however, some interesting factoids and subplots have developed. This case raises three distinct legal questions of interest to climate ch...
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