Prop 16 Defeated
Prop 16 was a California ballot measure designed to make it harder for local governments to get into the market as electricity sellers. A CLEE White Paper provides a comprehensive analysis of the proposal. Prop 16 was defeated by 52-48%. PG&E and its parent company had spent $46 million to push the measure, while opponents spent virtually nothing. Apparently vote buying has its limits, even in the bizarre world of California popular democracy....
CONTINUE READINGA Corporate Culture of Criminal Recklessness?
That Washington Post has a detailed story that details BP's culture of carelessness: Taken together, these documents portray a company that systemically ignored its own safety policies across its North American operations -- from Alaska to the Gulf of Mexico to California and Texas. Executives were not held accountable for the failures, and some were promoted despite them. What's most disturbing in the story is BP's history of filing false reports and suppressing worker ...
CONTINUE READINGBP’s pollution: not just the oil spill, according to The Onion
I can't resist pointing out this article from America's Finest News Source, The Onion, about the BP spill (continuing Dan's introduction of off-color expressions into Legal Planet). The Onion mocks BP's handling of the oil spill by characterizing the company as spewing out something else rather vile (a common expression for insincere or deceitful talk) from its corporate headquarters. Part of what makes this funny (and even more so, part of what makes it sad) is th...
CONTINUE READINGReflections on the BP disaster and today’s Bhopal criminal verdict
As Dan has pointed out, there has been discussion of possible criminal liability for BP for its conduct leading to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. David Uhlmann of the University of Michigan, a former federal environmental criminal prosecutor, has expressed optimism that a robust criminal prosecution of BP would appropriately punish BP, make it more likely that victims will be compensated, and "send a clear message that an environmental disaster of this magnitude c...
CONTINUE READINGThree Ingredients of Disaster
The N.Y. Times ran a front-page article Sunday about the organizational problems that contributed to the Deepwater Horizon disaster. For those who are familiar with the research on the causes of catastrophic accidents, there are few surprises. Deepwater Horizon involved three familiar organizational flaws that are often associated with catastrophic outcomes. The same kinds of organizational failures that led to the collapse of the defective New Orleans levee system d...
CONTINUE READINGEPA proposes general Clean Water Act permit for pesticides
In January 2009, the Sixth Circuit in National Cotton Council v. EPA struck down a Bush-era rule declaring that pesticide application to or over waters was exempt from the Clean Water Act's NPDES permit program, under which a permit is required for any discharge of pollutants to waters of the U.S. from a point source. The effect of that decision was later stayed until June 2011 to allow EPA time to respond. The agency has now issued a draft Pesticides General Permit whic...
CONTINUE READINGSave the Mountain Gorilla!
As I mentioned in yesterday's post, gorillas are a focus of this year's World Environment Day. There are only about seven hundred mountain gorillas in the wild - fewer than the number of students at most law schools. They're split between a group in the Virunga range of volcanoes and one in Bwindi Impenetrable National Park, Uganda. Lowland gorillas seem to be in better shape. Little is known about the Eastern lowlanders, but the western ones (with the wonderful scie...
CONTINUE READINGTime to resuscitate the Office of Technology Assessment?
Ninety organizations, including many with an environmental protection focus, have called on Congress to revive its Office of Technology Assessment. OTA was established in 1972 by the Technology Assessment Act to provide Congress with "competent, unbiased information concerning the physical, biological, economic, social, and political effects" of changing and expanding technology. It was defunded in 1995 by the "Contract with America" Congress, but has never been formal...
CONTINUE READINGWorld Environment Day
It may well have escaped your notice -- I have to admit it had escaped mine -- but today is World Environment Day. UNEP has chosen Rwanda as the main site for this year's celebration, which is one reason you might not have known about this if you're in North America. You may also be unaware that Rwanda is a biodiversity hotspot. It boasts 151 different types of mammal species, eleven of which are currently threatened and none of which are endemic. Among them are ...
CONTINUE READINGPew calls for federal leadership on climate adaptation
The Pew Center on Global Climate Change has issued a report on Adapting to Climate Change: A Call for Federal Leadership. As its title suggests, the report calls for the federal government to take the lead on climate adaptation efforts, creating a national adaptation program with three major elements: strategic planning, information provision, and research. The authors concede that state and local efforts are important, and indeed their suggestions are largely drawn from...
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