Mountaintop removal update: EPA may grow a spine
EPA today announced that it would review 79 pending applications for Clean Water Act section 404 permits for surface coal mining projects in Appalachia (hat tip: Coal Tattoo). This review is good news, and an indication that EPA may be developing a backbone with respect to the effects of mountaintop removal mining on the region's waterways. It remains to be seen how firm that spine will be, that is, how much EPA will demand in the way of changes before it allows the pr...
CONTINUE READINGWolf hunts can continue
A federal judge in Montana has refused to halt the hunting of gray wolves in Idaho and Montana, but has strongly suggested that the wolf was unlawfully delisted under the Endangered Species Act. In April, the US Fish and Wildlife Service removed the gray wolf in Idaho and Montana from the endangered species list. The Service reasoned that the northern Rockies wolf population had grown large enough to ensure viability, and that management plans in Idaho and Montana wou...
CONTINUE READINGIn Defense of Impact Men (and Women)
Full disclosure: I haven't seen the new film documentary opening this weekend in LA and NY, "No Impact Man," based on the nonfiction book of the same title, by Colin Beavan, that depicts his urban family of three trying -- impossibly, of course -- to shrink to nothing its environmental footprint, even going as far as to give up toilet paper. But I did read, and love, a New Yorker piece by climate writer Elizabeth Kolbert critiquing the film and book, in part bec...
CONTINUE READINGCass Sunstein Confirmed by Senate
To the dismay of some environmentalists, the Senate confirmed Cass Sunstein as “regulatory czar” today. An undeniably brilliant scholar, Sunstein is a long-time advocate of cost-benefit analysis as a check on overly zealous risk regulation. (Unfortunately, his views of regulation figured much less in the public debate than a frenzied campaign to mobilize hunters, gun owners, and farmers to oppose him because of his views on animal rights.) He has called for giv...
CONTINUE READING…in which I turn into a left-wing subversive
Glenn Beck has acquired his first (although surely not-to-be-last) scalp from the Obama Administration" CEQ Green jobs Coordinator Van Jones (whose appointment LegalPlanet noted in March) resigned his position Saturday night. I went to law school with Van, and while I am not a fan, I thought that letting him go would be an unwarranted capitulation to the wingnuts. So much for my influence. But I decided to protest in my own way. I went to my local Border’s, foun...
CONTINUE READINGRising Seas: Doing the Math
Real Climate has a very interesting if occasionally highly technical post on sea level rise. There's considerable disagreement about projections. Some projections rely on detailed modeling of the dynamics; others are based on fitting a model to past changes, more or less the way economists do modeling. The latter, "semi-empirical" projects are also in some disagreement, and the Real Climate posting tries to sort that out. The models can be translated into a simpl...
CONTINUE READINGOil Speculators, Land Use Planners, and Those Sticky Tar Sands
Three separate items in the news, this past week, underscore the fact that we still have much work to do before we can claim to have a viable plan for reducing fossil fuel use, and the related environmental damage. Energy Daily reports on a new paper from Rice University’s Baker Center for Public Policy showing “a clear increase in the size and influence of noncommercial traders, or ‘speculators,’ in the oil futures market since regulations were eased by the Co...
CONTINUE READINGMaking Offsets Transparent
Solve Climate has posted a letter from five state Attorneys General expressing concerns about several provisions of Waxman-Markey (a/k/a ACES). One suggestion they made, in particular, struck me as very persuasive: [T]he House bill does not require public disclosure of all offset project documentation, including project eligibility applications, monitoring and verification reports for agricultural or forestry offset projects, or disclosure of USDA’s determination of ...
CONTINUE READINGMisinformed Attacks on the Law of the Sea
While tidying my desk, I found a clipping from the Economist in mid-May, advocating U.S. ratification of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. (Yes, it was a wood desktop, not a LED screen, and the clipping was made of paper, not electrons. Call me old-fashioned!) The Economist makes a compelling case for ratification based on the needs of the ocean and U.S. national interest. The Economist is hardly starry-eyed about international cooperation (or environmenta...
CONTINUE READINGDuke Energy Leaves ACCCE But Who Remains?
Duke Energy, one of the largest electric utilities in the midwest and southeast and a prominent memeber of the U.S. Climate Action Partnership, announced this week that it has quit the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity. ACCCE, as it is known, is a trade group recently exposed as the front group that sent bogus letters on behalf of community groups opposing climate change legislation to Democratic representatives. But Duke claims its withdrawal from�...
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