Utilities-Only Carbon Cap
According to this morning's NY Times, Senate Democrats have agreed to include a utilities-only cap-and-trade program in their energy bill. That's certainly not ideal -- it excludes a large number of industrial sources, which limits its environmental effectiveness. The utilities-only program will also be less economically efficient, since it precludes taking advantage of possible low-cost reductions available in the industrial sector. Opinions will always differ abou...
CONTINUE READINGBreaking News: Jerry Brown Sues FHFA and Fannie & Freddie over PACE
As I suspected, we've got a lawsuit over the Federal Housing Finance Administration (FHFA) and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac's position on Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE). (Background on PACE and the controversy here.) California Attorney General Jerry Brown announced today that his agency is suing these entities in federal court over their unwillingness to guarantee mortgages on properties with PACE assessments. You can read the complaint here. The Attorney Ge...
CONTINUE READINGPhilip P. Frickey — A Life in the Law
I am sad beyond words to have to report the death of my friend and colleague Phil Frickey. His death is a great loss to Berkeley and the legal academy more generally. In terms of his scholarship, Phil was a major figure in constitutional law, but was probably best known among legal academics for his work on theories of statutory interpretation. His casebook with Bill Eskridge is commonly considered to have created the modern field of Legislation scholarship. He ...
CONTINUE READINGInterior hits the pause button again
Cross-posted at CPRBlog. As he had promised, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar today issued a new decision memorandum suspending certain deepwater drilling operations. Today's decision replaces the moratorium that the federal District Court in New Orleans enjoined on June 22, and which the Fifth Circuit declined to reinstate last week. As I made clear in my post on the Fifth Circuit decision, I think both the District Court and the Fifth Circuit were wrong on the first ...
CONTINUE READINGTravel Is Broadening–2010 Edition
Having just returned from a trip to Northern Europe, a couple of experiences resonate with me that, I hope, are worthy of sharing here. The first relates to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, British Petroleum, and the distinct ways in which BP's role and responsibility for the spill are viewed, depending on one's geographical roots. My recent travels took me to Great Britain and then on a journey to the Baltic region of Northern Europe, during which I was accompanied by ...
CONTINUE READINGGood crisis, bad crisis
The Gulf oil spill illuminates two aspects of crisis response: the strength and the limits of its power to motivate reflexive, rapid action. Crisis can motivate too much or too little. Consider first the limits of crisis as a driver of action. It's long been commonly thought that high-profile events were important in catalyzing the adoption of strong environmental legislation -- killer smogs for air pollution regulation, the Santa Barbara oil spill for water pollution...
CONTINUE READINGEnvironmental Property Rights (Part IV)
Previous posts have introduced the concept of environmental property rights, given a number of examples of such rights, and explained how various kinds of EPRs that appear quite different are actually closely related. Today's post argues the EPRs could actually change constitutional rulings in favor of the environment. I develop this argument in detail in a recent paper, but here is the basic argument for three important constitutional issues: standing doctrine...
CONTINUE READINGYucca Mountain dispute goes to Nuclear Regulatory Commission
The tangled saga of the proposed high-level nuclear waste disposal facility at Yucca Mountain is going to have at least one more chapter. In June 2008, President Bush's Department of Energy filed an application for a license to construct a high-level repository at Yucca Mountain. In March 2010, President Obama's Energy Department sought to withdraw that application with prejudice, meaning that it could not be refiled. Nevada applauded that move, but not everyone did. The...
CONTINUE READINGAre Heat Waves Related to Climate Change?
Andrew Leonard had a great post on Salon this week arguing -- essentially -- that liberal bloggers are wimps when it comes to connecting extreme climate events like heat waves to climate change. By contrast, he notes, conservatives eagerly throw barbs at Al Gore any time it snows in D.C.: climate denier James Inhofe's grandchildren apparently built an igloo last winter and proclaimed it "Gore's New Home." Leonard notes both that conservatives have been glaringly q...
CONTINUE READINGEnvironmental Property Rights (Part III)
An environmental property right (EPR) can be defined as an enforceable interest deriving from an environmental asset such as air quality or an undisturbed forest. EPRs are diverse and varied. Most EPRs are derived from statute rather than the common law, and many are of recent vintage. Some EPRs are marketable; others are not. Fundamentally, environmental property rights fall into major two categories. Some involve the power to prevent a third-party from impairing...
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