Clearing the Waters
Law Week (subscription only) reports that: Rep. James Oberstar (D-Minn.) introduced legislation April 21 that would amend the Clean Water Act to clarify and “reaffirm” U.S. jurisdiction over waters of the United States, including wetlands. The America's Commitment to Clean Water Act (H.R. 5088) would remove the term “navigable waters of the United States” from the Clean Water Act and replace it with the phrase “waters of the United States.” Specifically, it...
CONTINUE READINGHas the Recession Been Good for the Planet?
Sure, the economy is still hurting, and unemployment levels are unbearable and inequitable. But in terms of the desire to reduce climate disruption, are we better off now than we were before the recession hit? I am far from the first person to ask this question, but evidence pointing in a certain direction continues to build. Earlier in the month, the Associated Press reported on a government study indicating that the "U.S. births fell in 2008, probably because ...
CONTINUE READINGBeing Lindsey Graham
I posted over the weekend about Lindsey Graham's about-face on the climate bill. The Washington Post has a more sympathetic view, which I thought I should report out of fairness: And this is why Graham is angry: He's taken a huge risk to be the lone Republican on climate change. Patrick Creighton, a flack for the conservative Institute for Energy Research, says that Graham's involvement makes him "part of one of the most economically devastating pieces of legislation t...
CONTINUE READINGNo More “Global Warming”
In his ERG Lecture last week, John Holdren made an excellent point about terminology. The term "Global Warming" is totally misleading. "Warming" suggests a gradual, gentle process. Combined with the term "global," it suggests that the main concern is the increase in average global temperatures. As Holdren pointed out, this is all quite misleading: (1) the big concern is not with global averages (which are heavily weighted by the large amount of area occupied by ...
CONTINUE READINGClimate Bill 2.0 on Hold
Senator Graham has announced that he's withdrawing from the effort to pass the bill that he helped to draft, because he's irked that the Administration is pressing forward on immigration reform. I'm struggling a bit to understand this. The charitable explanation is that he's trying to pressure the administration into giving the climate bill priority. The uncharitable explanations are that he's caving in to pressure from party leaders, or that he's just having a his...
CONTINUE READINGThe Libertarian Case for Controlling Climate Change
Libertarians are, of course, deeply suspicious of government regulation. This may lead to a reflexive rejection of climate change mitigation. But Jonathan Adler, who provides a refreshingly distinctive view of environmental law from the Right, argues otherwise. In a forthcoming article (only the abstract is available on SSRN), he contends that libertarians are making a mistake in opposing climate mitigation: [E]ven if anthropogenic climate change is decidedly less t...
CONTINUE READINGFuture Energy Scenarios
In a recent post, I discussed projections of future oil prices. There are big uncertainties, which obviously pose challenges for major oil companies among others. The approach that Shell takes to such uncertainties is instructive. Shell has a long history of using scenarios as a planning tool. An important recent example is its analysis of "energy scenarios to 2050." As a Shell energy analyst explained on NPR: Looking out to the year 2050, Shell strategist J...
CONTINUE READINGA Flock of Environmental Law Journals
Doug Kysar has compiled a list of environmental law journals, which some of our readers may be interested to see. It's notable how many journals (more than fifty) specialize in environmental, natural resource, or regulatory matters. The list is after the jump. You can also find another list with links here. Speaking of environmental law reviews, I'm reminded of a wonderful slogan that ELQ used on T-shirts a few years ago: "Saving the planet, one footnote at a ti...
CONTINUE READINGClimate Legislation 2.0
The Washington Post has some details about the Kerry-Graham-Lieberman proposal, along with some encouraging reports of endorsements by utilities and oil companies. (Those, of course, come with a price in terms of industry concessions.) Some key features: *The bill would take effect in 2013 and would cut U.S. greenhouse gas emissions 17% by 2020 and 80% by 2050 -- with 2005 as the baseline. Not bad, but we really need 80% below 1990 levels by 2050 instead. *Two-...
CONTINUE READINGNew York Times Expands Its Green Blog
The New York Times announced yesterday that it's changing the name of its environmental blog and expanding its coverage. The name change is small but symbolic: from Green, Inc. to Green. The reason for the change is that coverage is expanding. As the Times explains, Green is: broadening our lens to include not just the business end of environmental concerns but also politics and policy, environmental science and consumer choices — all of the many areas where peopl...
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