Climate change affecting the U.S.
The US Global Change Research Program has just issued a report on Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States. For people who have been paying attention, there's not much new here. But this report, authored by a team of distinguished scientists from inside and outside the government, endorsed by the White House (see this White House blog post), and including region-by-region details, should help spread the word to others. It is already increasing popular media co...
CONTINUE READINGThe end of the Exxon Valdez legal saga?
Rick earlier posted about the 20th anniversary of the Exxon Valdez oil spill. This week, the Ninth Circuit may finally have brought the litigation that followed that spill to a close. You may recall that last year the U.S. Supreme Court heard Exxon's challenge to the punitive damages award against it, which had been set by the Ninth Circuit (after two remands to the trial court) at $2.5 billion. An equally divided Court upheld the Ninth Circuit's view that punitive dam...
CONTINUE READINGWhat Does the CBO Report on Waxman-Markey Actually Mean?
The Congressional Budget Office issued its report on the Waxman-Markey bill recently. The Washington Times immediately trumpeted: “CBO puts hefty price tag on emissions plan: Obama's cap-and-trade system seen costing $846 billion.” This is quite misleading. Actually, the CBO report tells us virtually nothing about the economic costs of the bill or how much consumers will be out of pocket. In fact, the way most people understand the idea of a budget deficit, it d...
CONTINUE READINGConfronting Uncertainty Under NEPA
Quantifying risks with confidence is often difficult. For the past thirty years, agencies and courts have struggled with the treatment of uncertainty in environmental impact statements. This problem is all the more important today. Climate change will require innovative solutions - new energy technologies, new adaptation strategies. These innovations will inevitably pose risks, often in the form of possible harm to human welfare or the environment. Climate change itself ...
CONTINUE READINGThe Supreme Court’s Love Affair with the Takings Clause–Not Over Just Yet
One of the biggest differences between the U.S. Supreme Court under former Chief Justice Rehnquist and the Court under current Chief Justice Roberts is the comparative interest in property rights and the Constitution's Takings Clause. From 1978 until Rehnquist's death in 2005, the Supreme Court heard one or more takings cases each Term--culminating in the "takings trifecta" of the Kelo, Lingle and San Remo Hotel decisions in 2005. Later that same year, John Roberts was...
CONTINUE READINGBreathless in Bombay Redux: Corruption and Environmental Law
As I mentioned a few days ago, Bombay has 55,000 taxicabs that all run on CNG. (And as I updated, the municipal buses do, too -- something else that India does better than the United States.). But Bombay's taxis present India-watchers and scholars with something of a problem: if you believe the standard story about India, this simply shouldn't be happening. Talk to anyone about governance in this country, and the first word you will hear will be "corruption." Indi...
CONTINUE READINGImportant New Climate Change Story
In a new and crucial climate change development, the Los Angeles Lakers have won their 15th World Championship. (For the northerners, that's 11 more than the Warriors and Kings combined.). Hooray! Now, all we need to do is figure out how to pay for the parade.......
CONTINUE READINGSelling the deteriorating atmosphere?
In February, I wrote about the quandary of how to refer to the effects of increased atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases so as to better communicate the seriousness of the problem and reach new audiences (recognizing that "global warming" is both too mild-sounding and politically polarized, and "climate change" isn't much better). How about the phrase "our deteriorating atmosphere" as a substitute? An initially-confidential report from ecoAmerica on...
CONTINUE READINGIs EVERYTHING Related to Climate Change?
I don't want to seem obsessed with a single issue, so I keep trying to come up with topics that have absolutely no relationship with climate change. But I can't seem to find any. The fact is that energy is such an integral part of our economy that almost all activities connect one way or another with energy use and hence (in a carbon-based economy) with climate change. Here are some examples chosen more or less at random: Women's fashions. Because fashions chang...
CONTINUE READINGNational ocean policy under construction
President Obama today proclaimed June 2009 to be National Oceans Month, a time to "celebrate these vast spaces and the myriad ways they sustain life." The proclamation calls on "all Americans to learn more about the oceans and what can be done to conserve them." Beyond that symbolic move, Obama took an important step toward a unified national ocean policy. He issued a memorandum creating an Ocean Policy Task Force led by the Council on Environmental Quality, and direc...
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