How Religion and Environmentalism Can Mix Productively
A few weeks ago, I posted on religion on the environment, expressing some skepticism that religion could be useful in environmental policy debates. After thinking about it a bit, I've revised that view somewhat, for a reason that can actually be encapsulated pretty succinctly: Religion is not economics. That's pretty obvious, of course, but it also demonstrates religious thought's potential utility in considering policy debates. Since the Reagan era, those have bee...
CONTINUE READINGSpecter on Board for Climate Legislation
Grist reports that Senator Specter says that he will vote for cloture and expects to support climate legislation on the merits. This is a shift from his position last year. That's one step closer to sixty votes....
CONTINUE READINGNew Issue of Ecology Law Quarterly is Available On-Line
Creating Flexibility in Interstate Compacts Emily Jeffers Read Article (PDF) Environmental Conservation Organization v. City of Dallas Creates Unnecessary Burdens for Citizen Suits under the Clean Water Act Catherine Mongeon Read Article (PDF) Making Snow in the Desert: Defining a Substantial Burden under RFRA Jonathan Knapp Read Article (PDF) Taking a Hard Look at Agency Science: Can the Courts Ever Succeed? Sara A. Clark Read Article (PDF) Lack of Deference: The...
CONTINUE READINGShow Me The Money!
Guess what? The oil industry is about to launch a populist campaign against climate change legislation. (Stop me if you've heard this one before.) Why would they do such a thing? The latest statistics on executive pay may tell us something about that. It turns out, according to Reuters, that the top bracket of employee compensation is dominated by oil executives: The CEOs of Occidental Petroleum Corp (NYSE:OXY - News), Hess Corp (NYSE:HES - News), Ultra Petroleu...
CONTINUE READINGAnd You Think Health Care Is Controversial?
In watching the insanity of the debate over health care reform in the past couple of weeks I can't help but wonder what the debate over climate change legislation will bring. Lest you think the right wing opponents of health care reform can't be beat in their intensity and rhetorical outrage, consider the following two pieces of information. First, Talkingpointsmemo.com revealed today the existence of a memo from the American Petroleum Institute urging member oil com...
CONTINUE READINGAnd You Wonder Why People Don’t Respect Lobbyists?
A cap-and-trade bill was defeated in Australia yesterday. As the New Republic points out (here), it's not clear that this is anything more than a temporary setback. An interesting sidelight, however, concerns the sources of the opposition -- some of which are U.S.-based: Incidentally, one of the largest, most influential opponents of the Australian bill was U.S. coal behemoth Peabody Energy, whose CEO Gregory Boyce seems to think global warming is all hokum and is b...
CONTINUE READINGMeat and climate change redux
Back in January, I blogged about the link between meat production and GHGs. Grist.org has taken up this issue recently, with an interesting article by Tom Philpott making the case that U.S. livestock production is a significant contributor to GHG emissions, and a rebuttal from farmer Eliot Coleman. As Philpott's article notes, a U.N. FAO report from a couple of years ago, Livestock's Long Shadow, found that 18% of global GHG emissions are caused by meat production wo...
CONTINUE READINGMore on reengineering – what about the oceans?
Regarding Dan's post on reengineering the planet, one more shortcoming of the commonly discussed geoengineering solutions (even assuming they work exactly as designed and have none of the unintended consequences Dan, and others, fear) is that they are far from complete, leaving out entirely any remedy for ocean acidification, the "other" greenhouse gas problem. More info on acidification here, accompanying yesterday's release of "Acid Test" on Planet Green. New find...
CONTINUE READINGCourt to Interior: Not so fast on rule change
In April, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar asked a federal court to vacate a last-minute Bush administration rule relaxing stream buffer zone requirements for dumping waste from mountaintop removal mining. Salazar said that the rule didn't pass the smell test, and that it had been improperly issued without ESA consultation. Environmental groups which had challenged the rule welcomed Salazar's announcement, but the National Mining Association, which had intervened in suppor...
CONTINUE READINGCalifornia’s Integrated Waste Management Board: Goodbye and Good Riddance
Shortly after taking office as California's Governor, following a tumultuous recall election in 2003, Arnold Schwarzenegger famously promised to "blow up the boxes" of state government in favor of a more streamlined governance structure. That commitment has since largely been sacrificed on the alter of ever-contentious California politics. But this summer's belated and painfully-negotiated California budget process has produced one major change in the state's environ...
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