Supreme Court takes another NEPA remedies case
The U.S. Supreme Court has granted review of the Ninth Circuit's decision in Monsanto Co. v. Geertson Seed Farms. The grant is pretty clearly a follow-up to Winter v. NRDC, the sonar case from last term, in which the Court reversed an injunction the Ninth Circuit had imposed limiting the use of mid-frequency active sonar during Navy training exercises off the southern California coast. Monsanto v. Geertson doesn't have the national security implications of Winter, but ...
CONTINUE READINGWhat’s in Your Toothpaste?
A new UCLA study raises health concerns about a nanomaterial found in a broad range of consumer products. Nanoscale titanium dioxide, which is used in toothpaste, sunscreen, paint, cosmetics, vitamins, food coloring, and nutritional supplements, has not been extensively studied for its toxicological properties. A team lead by Robert Schiestl, a professor of pathology, radiation oncology and environmental health sciences at UCLA, examined the effects of the ingestion...
CONTINUE READINGCampaign to Suspend AB 32 Unlikely to Go Anywhere
Last Monday, the Wall Street Journal editorialized in favor of both a bill and a newly filed ballot initiative to suspend the implementation of California's landmark greenhouse gas emissions legislation, AB 32, until the state's unemployment rate falls from it's current 12+ % to under 5.5% for four consecutive quarters. On the same day the fate of the bill became clear as the Assembly Natural Resources Committee voted to reject the legislation. The next step in the ...
CONTINUE READINGIndian Federalism and Climate Change
Federalism is a hot topic (so to speak) for scholars working on climate change, but we have so far remained resolutely at home, focusing solely on American federalism. It's now time to start thinking about how federalism might impact India, which has maintained a federal system for more than 60 years, and has decentralized greatly in recent years. How might we do this? Here's a hypothesis: Scholars of India's response to globalization have long recognized that fe...
CONTINUE READINGWorth a click
The environmental news has been coming fast this week. There's too much for me to keep up with all of it, but here are some stories worth checking out. Time for federal bee regulation? The AP reports (in the LA Times) that the Xerces Society, Natural Resources Defense Council, Defenders of Wildlife and a UC Davis entomologist have petitioned the USDA to prohibit shipping of domesticated bumblebees and hives outside their native range, and to certify that domesticated ...
CONTINUE READINGWhere Do We Go After Copenhagen?
Berkeley will be holding an interdisciplinary conference of climate change experts on January 28 to sort out the aftermath of Copenhagen. The participants will include faculty in law, political science, economics, public policy, and engineering. For more details about the conference or to RSVP, click here. ...
CONTINUE READINGThe lasting legacy of DDT
Picking up on Dan's theme that "it ain't over till it's over," sometimes that's a good thing, as with the prospects for U.S. climate change legislation, but sometimes it's a bad thing. An example comes from the journal Nature, which recently carried a news story about DDT (subscription required). DDT, once widely used as an agricultural and disease-control insecticide that was banned in the U.S. in 1972, and in many other developed countries shortly thereafter. DDT is on...
CONTINUE READINGThe Politics of Climate Change: It Ain’t Over Till It’s Over
There's been a lot of talk about whether federal climate change legislation is dead for this session. Bradford Plummer at the New Republic makes a pretty good case that the legislation is still alive and kicking: That said, there don't seem to be any signs that Democrats are planning to relent just yet. A few days ago, Ben Geman of The Hill reported that most of the caucus wants to move on a climate bill, and that includes coal-staters like Arlen Specter. . . .. And the...
CONTINUE READINGMore on EPA approval of the Hobet 45 mountaintop removal permit
Cross-posted at CPR Blog. On Monday, EPA signed off on the Corps of Engineers' issuance of a Clean Water Act § 404 permit to Hobet Mining for a mountaintop removal coal mining project in West Virginia. The decision is important because it's the first product of the process announced last fall for joint EPA / Corps review of a large number of pending permit applications. It's troubling for several reasons. First and most simply, it allows a major mountaintop mining proj...
CONTINUE READINGEPA cuts a deal on major mountaintop mining permit
We've been periodically covering the Obama EPA's attempt to find a middle way on mountaintop removal mining, reducing the most egregious environmental impacts of the practice without prohibiting it altogether. On Monday EPA announced, in effect, that it thinks it has found that compromise. In a letter to the Corps of Engineers Huntington office, EPA declared that it would not object to issuance of a permit for Hobet Mining's Surface Mine No. 45 in West Virginia, one of t...
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