Clearing Title (and Rain Forest)
On Friday, the day Waxman-Markey passed the U.S. House, another significant legal development took place -- one that may also bear on climate change. President Lula of Brazil signed a bill providing legal title to squatters on Amazon land. Opponents argue that it will spark speculation in Amazonian property and increase deforestation....
CONTINUE READINGEnvironmental law humor
Clean Water Act mavens may recall the controversy about a year ago when the Army Corps of Engineers determined that the Los Angeles River was not navigable, and therefore did not fall under federal CWA jurisdiction (LA Times story here). A Corps biologist responded by kayaking the river on her day off to prove it was in fact navigable, and was threatened with suspension for her trouble. (Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility took up the biologist's cause and ...
CONTINUE READINGBiodiversity-friendly seawalls
Seawalls as typically constructed are smooth, vertical structures, beautiful to an engineer's eye but unappealing to tidal creatures looking for the more complex physical structure typical of a rocky shore. A new paper (Oecologia, subscription required) out of the University of Sydney shows that engineering and ecology need not be at odds, however. The authors describe an experiment in which engineers and ecologists, working together, designed a sea wall which incorpor...
CONTINUE READINGClimate Bill Passes House!
The Waxman-Markey bill narrowly passed the House yesterday. This is a historic achievement. As Cara reported yesterday, there are some real qualms about whether the bill is strong enough -- and particularly about its heavy reliance on offsets. Environmentalists have never liked offsets, partly because they lessen the technology-forcing effect of emissions controls and partly because enforcement and monitoring can be problematic. Waxman-Markey certainly isn't the ...
CONTINUE READINGMove Over, Summer of Love. It’s Time for Power Flower
We tend to think of renewable power as coming in two sizes: single home-sized photovoltaic arrays, or big, remotely-located power plants. Thus, we pour incentive dollars on solar homes, and place a tremendous emphasis on building large new transmission lines. Perhaps it is time to review this approach, and consider what we can do to promote modestly-sized renewable-based generators that can serve more than one customer. There are many options for siting such facili...
CONTINUE READINGClimate bill up for a vote
Looks like the House leadership is taking its chances on a vote on Waxman-Markey's climate bill today or tomorrow, despite some uncertainty about the outcome. And not all environmentalists are hoping for a victory -- in addition to worries about biofuel lifecycle emissions that Jonathan discussed earlier, there's concern over the recent deal Waxman and Markey struck with the Agricultural Committee to relocate the power to regulate farm and forestry offsets from EPA ...
CONTINUE READINGThe costs and benefits of coal
It was widely reported earlier this week that outspoken NASA climate scientist James Hansen and 30 others were arrested at a West Virginia coal operation where they were protesting mountaintop removal mining. The protesters were met at the mine by several hundred counter-protesters, described by the Charleston Gazette as "miners and family members" defending their jobs. A report by scientists at West Virginia University, published in the peer-reviewed journal Public...
CONTINUE READINGNew EPA air toxics report presents sobering assessment of cancer risk
A new U.S. EPA report released today presents a scary picture of our exposure to hazardous pollutants in our air. The National-Scale Air Toxics Assessment for 2002, which analyzed health data based on chronic exposure to air toxics for 124 pollutants for which those data are available. (The assessment's name is potentially confusing; the report analyzed data from 2002.) The most important take-home message: over 2 million Americans live in census tracts where expo...
CONTINUE READINGPreble’s mouse jumps back into the courtroom
Five environmental groups -- NRDC, Center for Biological Diversity, Defenders of Wildlife, Center for Native Ecosystems, and Biodiversity Conservation Alliance -- have filed a lawsuit challenging FWS's decision last year to list the Preble's meadow jumping mouse (pictured) as threatened only in Colorado, leaving it off the protected list in Wyoming. FWS justified that distinction on the factual grounds that the mouse faces fewer threats in Wyoming (because there is l...
CONTINUE READINGIs Waxman-Markey Even Worth It?
If Michael O'Hare is right about this, then Waxman-Markey might not be worth the candle: Waxman appears to have sold out the indirect land use issue in a deal with Peterson on the climate change bill: "Waxman also consented to block EPA from calculating "indirect" greenhouse gas emissions from land-use changes when implementing the federal biofuels mandate. The Democrats will impose a five-year moratorium to allow further study of the issue, with consultation from Congr...
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