(Vermont) Yankee Go Home!
You may recall the Supreme Court's decision in the Vermont Yankee case. It was a major administrartive law decision. Prior to Vermont Yankee, the D.C. Circuit and some other courts had been experimenting with an approach to judicial review which focused on helping to improve agency procedures, rather than reviewing the substance of the agency's decision. The Supreme Court ended that experiment in no uncertain terms. The Court also held that the agency did not h...
CONTINUE READINGUCLA Clinic persuades federal Administrative Law Judge to vacate approval of new coal mining permit on Indian land in Arizona
I have some exciting news I can't resist sharing: UCLA's Frank G. Wells Environmental Law Clinic won a major administrative case last month, which is now final now that the time for appeal has run. All twelve of our clinic students spent a significant chunk of this fall working on it, along with me and Cara. We convinced an Administrative Law Judge at the US Dept of Interior Office of Surface Mining to issue a decision vacating an agency action approving a new permit t...
CONTINUE READINGIs EPA backtracking on Clean Air Act greenhouse gas regulation?
UPDATE: Cara discusses in this post some further developments that make the EPA's plans more concrete, and concludes that the EPA is backtracking significantly from its proposed rule by delaying the timetable and by regulating fewer facilities. **** Last fall, our Environmental Protection Agency appeared to be on the verge of moving very quickly to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act's powerful Prevention of Significant Deterioration program, which would ...
CONTINUE READINGIPhone App to Counter Climate Skeptics
Jonathan and I have had a somewhat spirited debate about what to do about Climategate (see here and here). I just found one perhaps small but very smart answer: an IPhone app that lists top arguments from climate skeptics and succinct rebuttals. The arguments are divided into three categories: "it's not happening," "it's not us" and "it's not bad." The arguments are set forth pithily (e.g., "the sun is warming") and answered in a few quick sentences (e.g., "In th...
CONTINUE READINGDOE Bets on Central Station Solar — Is It the Right Horse?
Congratulations to Oakland’s BrightSource Energy Inc. for winning the largest federal loan guarantee for a renewable energy project thus far -- $1.37 billion for the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System, to be constructed in the Mojave Desert. For an observer like me – one who is most definitely not a financial markets expert – the U.S. Department of Energy’s decision to back the Ivanpah project leaves unanswered questions. Is this the best way for DOE t...
CONTINUE READINGAB 32 Opposition and Truth in Advertising
While some politicians have called publicly for the suspension of AB 32 until the economy recovers (see here and here for details), a more behind-the-scenes effort to undercut the implementation of California's global warming bill is also taking place. The AB 32 Implementation Group ("IG") says it "represents large and small business that are vital to California's economy and that provide hundreds of thousands of jobs." It describes its mission as providing a co...
CONTINUE READINGNew Approaches to Analyzing Uncertainty
Conventional risk analysis is not well equipped to analyze actions with unknown probabilities and potentially disastrous consequences, and uncertainty in these situations is especially dangerous. The precautionary principle provides some guidance about these problems, but lacks specificity. We urgently need new ways of thinking about these issues. Luckily, some new techniques have emerged for appraising potential catastrophic outcomes. These techniques can be ap...
CONTINUE READINGKeeping Up With EPA’s Rulemaking Efforts
A new Web-based "dashboard" is now available on EPA's Web site. Created by the Office of Policy, Economics, and Innovation, this site provides a transparent way to keep track of the agency’s priority rulemakings. It provides users with earlier and more targeted information as well as special filters that allow users to find rules and related documents that interest them. This tool should be especially useful to those tracking issues involving environmental justice...
CONTINUE READINGLining up for endangerment litigation
February 16 marked the deadline to challenge EPA's finding that greenhouse gas emissions endanger public health and welfare in federal court. According to BNA's Environment Reporter, 16 such challenges were filed. The earliest seems to have come from an entity called the "Coalition for Responsible Regulation," joined by mining and livestock interests (hat tip to Global Climate Law Blog). The most high-profile litigants may be the states of Texas, Alabama, and Virginia. T...
CONTINUE READINGTracking U.S. Climate Change Litigation
The most famous case about climate change is Massachusetts v. EPA, which led to a key decision by the U.S. Supreme Court. But there have been dozens of other lawsuits, and more are coming all the time. Fortunately, there's a handy on-line resource for tracking all these cases. It's worth taking a look at....
CONTINUE READINGJoin Our Mailing List
Climate policy is changing rapidly. Stay in the loop with expert analysis via email Monday - Friday.
