Early endangerment finding fallout

As Dan discussed here, on Monday EPA finalized its finding that greenhouse gas emissions endanger public health and welfare. The new rule won't be effective until 30 days after its publication in the Federal Register, but it is already generating spin and promises of litigation. Even before the final finding was issued, the Center for Biological Diversity had petitioned EPA to set a National Ambient Air Quality Standard for CO2 at 350 ppm. CBD has also posted a working...

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“Oil and politics mix well, but I’m not sure if oil and science mix well”

By Alexa Engelman, UCLA Law delegation -- one in a series of posts from COP 15 in Copenhagen: "Oil and politics mix well, but I'm not sure if oil and science mix well."  So stated IPPC Chair Rajendra Pachauri when asked by reporters in a session at the Bella Center Tuesday morning about the hacked emails from climate scientists at the University of East Anglia.   With the worldwide media frenzy around the so-called “ClimateGate,” many (including those on legal ...

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An Important New Working Paper Series

The Energy and Resources Group (ERG) at UC Berkeley has begun a new series of working papers.  The series will feature new research on energy, sustainability, and social justice. The first paper to be posted is "Measuring Emissions Against An Alternative Future: Fundamental Flaws in the Structure of the Kyoto Protocol's Clean Development Mechanism."  The author, Barbara Haya, is a Ph.D student at ERG.  She marshalls the evidence that CDM is fatally flawed and sugge...

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Climategate: Did the Russians do it?

The "Climategate" story gets even weirder. New Scientist reports (picking up the story from The Independent) that anonymous sources in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change think the Russian secret service is responsible for hacking into e-mail at the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit. The reported evidence? [T]he hacked data apparently surfaced on the server of a Russian internet security company based in the Siberian city of Tomsk, where the FSB...

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Global cooling? Not!

Climate change deniers (I can't bring myself to write "denialists," which is not a word recognized by my dictionary) have made a lot of the fact that 1998 was warmer than the years that immediately followed, as if a warming trend could only be real if every year was warmer than the next. Of course that's not the case; a trend super-imposed on a noisy system (like the weather) can be quite real even if some years are above or below the trend line. Now the World Meteoro...

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Extra! Extra! Read All About It!

Now you don't have to check the Legal Planet webpage to find out if there's anything new.  You can get notice by email whenever there's a new posting. On the right side of this page, there's a button labeled "Email Alerts."  Use it to subscribe to Legal Planet by email, so you'll know whenever there's a new posting. ...

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COP 15 Kicks Off!

By Maya Kuttan, UCLA Law delegation -- first in a series of posts from COP15: Today we were inundated with weighty rhetoric and a shiny vision of what the future could hold.  The COP 15 opening was inspiring and seemed to focus on influencing developed nations, like the US.  The conference started with a short film about a girl who has nightmares about climate change until she is able to find her voice. The Prime Minister of Denmark, Lars Rasmussen, focused his we...

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The Other Shoe Drops

Today, EPA made its long-expected official finding: climate change is real, and we human beings are the cause. More than two years after the Supreme Court ordered EPA to address the issue, EPA has now formally ruled that greenhouse gases cause climate change that endangers human health or welfare.  EPA also found that motor vehicles contribute significantly to levels of greenhouse gases.  These findings trigger regulation under the Clean Air Act for motor vehicles.�...

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Winning Hearts and Minds on Climate Change: Climategate, EPA Announcement and Copenhagen

Proponents of rigorous regulation of greenhouse gas emissions finally have the international stage today as all attention shifts to Copenhagen.  And the EPA has chosen this opening day to announce the finalization of  its finding that greenhouse gases endanger public health and welfare and therefore must be regulated under the Clean Air Act.  Moreover 56 of the world's newspapers -- led by The Guardian -- issued a joint editorial today urging international action to c...

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The World’s Our “Oyster”

Belfast University has launched the world's largest wave generation device, which has been named the Oyster.  According to its sponsors, the marine energy industry could provide as many as 12,500 jobs, contributing £2.5 billion to the UK economy by 2020. Marine energy such as that produced by Oyster has the potential to meet up to 20 per cent of the UK's energy demands....

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