Wishful thinking doesn’t justify grizzly delisting
Federal Judge Donald Molloy in Montana has ordered the Fish and Wildlife Service to restore grizzly bears in the Yellowstone area to the list of endangered and threatened species. Judge Molloy refused to allow FWS to delist the grizzly on the basis of unsupported wishful thinking about the bear's future. Grizzly bears once roamed across most of the North American west, but the population in Yellowstone is one of the few remaining remnants in the lower 48. The grizzly ...
CONTINUE READINGConnecticut v. AEP: Three Comments
The Second Circuit's recent decision in Connecticut v. AEP, in which a coalition of state attorneys general sued electric power producers to cap and then reduce their carbon emissions, allows the public nuisance case to proceed and gave the environmental plaintiffs virtually everything they wanted. It should also give pause to those of us tempted to see judges as purely political: it was decided by Judges Peter W. Hall, a George W. Bush appointee from Vermont, and J...
CONTINUE READINGA promising step toward a national ocean policy
In June, President Obama created an Interagency Ocean Policy Task Force, and directed it to make recommendations for a national ocean policy. The Task Force got right to work. Now, after convening two dozen expert roundtables, inviting public comment, and holding the first of six public sessions, the Task Force has issued an Interim Report recommending key elements of a national policy. The Interim Report is very encouraging. If the Task Force follows this bluepri...
CONTINUE READINGClimate Change Lesson #2: Watch Out for Those “Unknown Unknowns”
This is the second in a short series of homilies on the lessons we can learn from climate change. Donald Rumsfeld famously distinguished between knowns, known unknowns, and unknown unknowns. He didn't take the occasion to provide sharp analytical distinctions, but the difference between known unknowns and unknown unknowns is very much like a difference drawn by some economists between risk (which can be reasonably quantified) and uncertainty (which can't be). In te...
CONTINUE READINGSecond Circuit Remands Connecticut v. AEP
In climate change news, the Second Circuit has (finally!) issued its decision in the case of Connecticut v. AEP, where a bunch of states sued electric power producers, saying that their carbon emissions constitute a common-law "public nuisance." The appellate court overturned the trial court's (completely unsupportable and poorly reasoned) decision that such a lawsuit was a nonjusticiable "political question." This potentially could add some force to the climate chang...
CONTINUE READINGFor Renewable Energy in California, It’s Not Clear Which Way the Wind is Blowing
If California's governor sticks to the plan he announced last week, California's leadership role in promoting domestic renewable energy development is in doubt. As Cara Horowitz reported in a recent post, the governor announced his intention to veto recently-passed legislation that would have set a target of 33% renewable power by 2020. Instead of signing the bills, he issued an Executive Order directing the state's Air Resources Board to create and direct such a man...
CONTINUE READINGDavid Nawi Appointed to High-Ranking USDOI Post
U.S. Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar has named a respected California environmental lawyer to serve in a key, newly-created Department of Interior post. Salazar appointed David Nawi as his Senior Advisor to the Secretary for California and Nevada. In his announcement selecting Nawi, Secretary Salazar stated, "The current water crisis and land management challenges in our nation's most populous state, California, as well as the extensive Interior land resources i...
CONTINUE READINGEid Mubarak: Islam and the Environment
This evening, Muslims around the world are celebrating the end of Ramadan. All the talk of political Islam has overlooked the question of what, if anything, Islam says about the environment, and a short blog post can hardly be comprehensive. My initial reading of the Qu'ran reveals something that should be unremarkable to those who have studied environmental rhetoric in the Bible: the text has resources both for those with an environmental conscience and those who th...
CONTINUE READINGClimate Lesson #1: It’s a Small World After All
This is the first in a short series of homilies on the lessons we can learn from climate change. Thirty years ago, in the early days of environmental law, it seemed that most environmental problems were local. Pollution came from cities and bedeviled the residents of those same cities. Wilderness areas suffered from human incursions, and rare species were endangered by habitat change or over exploitation. What we thought we knew then is true -- but only partly. A...
CONTINUE READINGMeg Whitman Would Suspend AB 32
In a rather stunning and little-noticed op ed last week, California GOP gubernetorial candidate Meg Whitman -- former CEO of EBay - called on Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to suspend the implementation of AB 32. Her rationale? To create jobs in California. AB 32, also known as the Global Warming Solutions Act, cuts California's greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020. The bill also contains a provision , Section 38599, that allows the Governor to susp...
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