Cronkite on Climate
Some people are calling him "the last journalist" because his breed of even-handed, fact-based report seems to be an endangered species. Be that as it may, it's interesting to note that he spoke out on the subject of climate change a few years ago in the pages of the Philadelphia Inquirer. Not surprising, his perspective was different from that of the Bush Administration, which made a practice of scoffing at the "reality-based community": The contempt of the Bush adm...
CONTINUE READINGDeputy Director Named for CEQ
The White House has announced that Gary S. Guzy, former general counsel and counselor to the administrator of EPA during the Clinton administration and previously a senior attorney in DOJ's environmental division, will be named deputy director of the Council on Environmental Quality. Guzy has also been a partner at Foley Hoag, a consultant to the Senate Environment & Public Works Committee and the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, and a Visiting Scholar at the Environ...
CONTINUE READINGWaxman Markey, the Clean Air Act and State Climate Legislation
As I suggested last week, the prospects for the Waxman-Markey bill passing Congress this term don't seem particularly high. President Obama is expending significant political capital on health care reform. The Senate is occupied with the Sotomayor Supreme Court hearings. And the politics of climate legislation may be even tougher in the Senate than in the House. All is not lost, however. Groundwork laid by states and environmental groups during the long years of...
CONTINUE READINGBirthing Respect
I was a whale lawyer for years (or, more correctly, a lawyer for people working to protect whales and their habitat). I therefore can't resist the urge to link to this terrific piece in the NY Times magazine on the developing relationship between gray whales and their human fans in Laguna San Ignacio, one of the few remaining gray whale nurseries in the eastern Pacific. Each year, whales migrate thousands of miles down the coast of North America, from Alaska to ...
CONTINUE READINGBack to the future in northwest federal forests
Interior Secretary Ken Salazar today announced the withdrawal of the Bush administration's last-minute revisions of the Northwest Forest Plan. Interior will also ask a federal court to vacate the 2008 modification of critical habitat for the northern spotted owl, and will review the 2008 spotted owl recovery plan, heavily criticized by outside scientists, which was used to justify the changes to critical habitat and the Northwest Forest Plan. Salazar explained that the B...
CONTINUE READINGA Silver Lining to the Supreme Court Term for Environmentalists?
In assessing the environmental train wreck that was the just-concluded Supreme Court Term, the question arises: is there anything from that Term from which environmental interests can take comfort? The answer is at least a qualified "yes." Somewhat lost in the attention focused on the justices' five major environmental decisions--all of them clear defeats for environmental interests--is the fact that the Roberts Court showed far greater solicitude toward state law and...
CONTINUE READINGCynthia Giles Tackles Busy Agenda in High-Ranking EPA Post
The following was written by Andrew Cohen for Berkeley Law's Newsroom. As the new enforcement chief for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Cynthia Giles [Berkeley Law alum of] ’78 is anything but naïve about the enormity of her position and the pressure it brings. “We have a lot of important work to do,” says Giles, nominated by President Obama as head of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance and confirmed by the Senate in May. “Our Administrator h...
CONTINUE READINGCorps proposes to require individual permits for mountaintop removal mining
Last month, the Obama administration announced an interagency agreement to develop a coordinated policy on mountaintop removal mining. Now the Army Corps of Engineers has taken the first step toward implementing that promise. The Corps has been permitting mountaintop mining through Nationwide Permit 21, a process that provides little opportunity for public input and environmental review. Yesterday it published a proposal to amend NWP 21 to prohibit its use for surface co...
CONTINUE READINGOne step toward Klamath River dam removal, many more remain
The agreement to remove four dams on the Klamath River in Oregon and California is one step closer to implementation. Yesterday Oregon Governor Ted Kulongoski signed into law a bill that will provide up to $180 million from surcharges on electric rates toward the costs of decommissioning and removing the dams. The new law is intended to fulfill Oregon's commitment under an Agreement in Principle reached last year by Oregon, California, the US, and dam operator PacifiCo...
CONTINUE READINGCap and trade: it’s never worked, so let’s try it on a massive scale
Why exactly do people believe that cap-and-trade is going to be effective in reducing greenhouse gas emissions? Let's face it: cap and trade is a nice idea that simply doesn't work in practice. The one success story that proponents have held up was the successful effort to control acid rain. However, that program involved a relatively straightforward technological fix for a few hundred power plants to switch to low-sulfur coal. But more importantly, cap-and-trade and ot...
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