Some Reflections and Predictions Based on Yesterday’s Supreme Court Arguments in the Stop the Beach Renourishment Case
As reported earlier this week on this site, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments yesterday in an important property rights/environmental case, Stop the Beach Renourishment v. Florida Dept. of Environmental Protection. Here are some observations and (perhaps intemperate) predictions based on those arguments, which I was able to attend at the Supreme Court yesterday:The first big surprise was when the justices took the bench to hear the case: there were only eight j...
CONTINUE READINGRenewable energy white paper released by Berkeley/UCLA Law & California Attorney General’s Office
As part of an ongoing series of white papers on business and climate change, UC Berkeley and UCLA Schools of Law, together with the California Attorney General's Office, is pleased to release our second white paper, on the topic of increasing renewable energy production from large public and commercial buildings, highway land, aqueducts, and other facilities located close to electricity consumers. The report is called "In Our Backyard: How to Increase Renewable Energy P...
CONTINUE READINGProperty Rights, Coastal Protection and the Roberts Court
Today the U.S. Supreme Court hears oral arguments in the most consequential environmental case of the current Term: Stop the Beach Renourishment v. Florida Department of Environmental Protection, No. 08-1151. This case bears close watching, for several reasons. First, the litigation represents the Roberts Court's first foray into the longstanding legal and policy debate pitting environmental protection and property rights protected under the Takings Clause of the U.S....
CONTINUE READINGNPDES permits on impaired waterways
Cross-posted at CPRBlog. Precisely what the Clean Water Act requires of point sources that discharge to already-polluted waterways has long been a point of confusion. Now, according to Inside EPA (subscription required) EPA may revise the rules it applies to new permits on impaired waterways. A rulemaking seems far from certain at this point -- the story quotes an EPA spokesperson as saying the agency is "considering the possibility" -- but if EPA does launch one it...
CONTINUE READINGAn Unhappy Update on Climate Science
The Copenhagen Diagnosis updates the last IPCC report. Most of the news isn't encouraging: Global ice-sheets are melting at an increased rate; Arctic sea-ice is disappearing much faster than recently projected, and future sea-level rise is now expected to be much higher than previously forecast, according to a new global scientific synthesis prepared by some of the world’s top climate scientists. In a special report called ‘The Copenhagen Diagnosis’, the 26 rese...
CONTINUE READING“Say What?” – Learning to Communicate About Climate Change
Scientists and journalists have very different professional training and skill sets. Often they find it hard to communicate with each other. Steps are being taken at Berkeley to try to address this problem. Berkeley’s Energy and Resources Group (ERG) and the Journalism School have announced a new set of resources on effectively communicating about climate change. These resources take the form of two tip sheets—one for journalists and another for scientists...
CONTINUE READINGLow-Cost Solar Power Should Be Close At Hand
I am beginning to wonder. If the answer for making solar energy cheaper than coal were to pass our way, would we see it coming? Would we recognize it, and rally to help it to succeed? The fact is, I think I may have seen it, already. It is tough to discover how hard it is to get our policy leaders to figure it out. About a year ago, Berkeley Law’s Dean Christopher Edley traveled to Detroit to meet with Stan Ovshinsky, a man who for more than 50 years has been...
CONTINUE READINGWelcoming Stanford to the Eco-Blogosphere
Stanford Law School has a new blog, "Environment and Energy Insight," which may be of interest to our readers: At Environment & Energy Insights, you will find a new post on our blog at least every two weeks that will address a topic of immediate relevance to environmental lawyers and policymakers. The authors include Meg Caldwell, Deborah Sivas, Buzz Thompson, and Michael Wara, all faculty members of Stanford’s Environmental & Natural Resources Law & Poli...
CONTINUE READINGGoogling Climate Change
I was curious about what information people would find if they were curious about climate change and took the easiest route by googling the phrase "climage change." It's a mixed story. The first listing on the page (presumably sponsored) is a Chevron site. Right below that are "related searches" for climate change emails climate change hoax climate change skeptics . When I did the same search with Yahoo, the second entry, right after Chevron, was Is There Glob...
CONTINUE READINGIn Terms of Ethanol, Corny Is Not Funny
Today's NY Times has an excellent op ed on corn ethanol. In terms of the environmental impact, the author (Russell Harding) says: . . . . if ethanol use was really helping the environment, it might be worth putting up with higher costs. But many environmental groups dropped their support for corn-based ethanol after two studies published by the journal Science last February concluded that ethanol production actually increases the amount of carbon dioxide released i...
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