New Standing Decision
The Supreme Court announced its decision in Summers v Earth Island Institute this morning. The full opinion is on the Supreme Court site.) In a 5-4 split, the Court denied standing in an opinion by Justice Scalia. As Justice Stevens' dissent explains: The Court holds that the Sierra Club and its members along with other environmental organizations) do not suffer any "‘concrete injury'" when the Forest Service sells timber for logging on "many thousands" of small ...
CONTINUE READINGStill waiting on Lubchenco and Holdren
On February 12, the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation held a hearing (see here for the webcast) on the nominations of Jane Lubchenco as NOAA Administrator and John Holdren as head of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. Although Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) questioned Holdren sharply over some papers Holdren wrote in the 1970s predicting "eco-catastrophe," no significant controversy or opposition to the nominees emerged at the h...
CONTINUE READINGWhy is GM using taxpayer funds to fight clean car progress?
Just back from a weekend conference where climate litigator Matthew Pawa gave a keynote address. He's one of the lawyers who successfully defended California's right to demand that automakers make cars that limit their greenhouse gas emissions, calling and cross-examining witnesses in a dramatic 2007 trial that put climate change science on the stand. In some ways it was the modern-day equivalent of the Scopes trial, but with science winning this time. (Read the co...
CONTINUE READINGDon’t hamstring the Endangered Species Act
The federal Endangered Species Act (ESA) is a vitally important bulwark in the legal protections for our environment in the United States. The ESA provides essential life support to a wide range of species on the edge of extinction, species such as our native salmon, grizzly bears, and California condors. The Act has helped to bring back species such as our national symbol, the bald eagle. Of course, there are costs to the ESA. We might lose out on economic development o...
CONTINUE READINGIs Environmental Law Socialist?
Conservatives might be seeking a spiritual leader, organizing principle and fresh identity, but they at least seem to have settled on a favorite rhetorical ogre: socialism. As in, Democrats are intent on forcing socialism on the "U.S.S.A" (as the bumper sticker says, under the words "Comrade Obama"). This trend, as reported by the New York Times, raises the question of whether environmental law is "socialist" in some sense. No doubt many of Rush Limbaugh's fan...
CONTINUE READINGGreening the House
Congress is giving up on immediate carbon neutrality, but it's not clear if this is real step forward giving the complexities involved with offsets. According to the Washington Post: The promise that the House would effectively reduce its greenhouse gas emissions to zero was a centerpiece of the Green the Capitol program in which the new Democratic leadership sought to use Capitol Hill as a kind of a national demonstration project. But last week, a spokesman for the Ho...
CONTINUE READINGIt’s the Economy
The Western Business Roundtable doesn’t care for Cap and Trade (the politician’s tool of choice for reducing carbon emissions). In fact, it is hard to believe that the organization gives much weight to the climate challenge at all. The Roundtable, the website of which does not list its members, but describes them as including representatives of the coal, oil, and gas industries, hired a consultant to explain why the Western Climate Initiative (WCI) is a bad idea. The...
CONTINUE READINGAwaiting bad news on international fisheries
Early this month, I posted about WWF's report on the dismal state of compliance with the FAO's voluntary Code of Conduct for Responsible Fisheries. Now Rebecca Bratspies notes on IntLawGrrls that FAO is scheduled to release its biennial report on the state of the world's fisheries on March 2, and that "[t]he news is not likely to be good." Bratspies points out that millions of women are hit especially hard by fisheries declines....
CONTINUE READINGMore (and better) climate adaptation research needed
The National Research Council has just issued a new study on the U.S. Climate Change Science Program. The key conclusion: the current program does not effectively support societal response to climate change, in part because it is too focused on natural science to the exclusion of work on the human dimensions of climate change. The executive summary explains: The traditional approach of organizing climate change research by scientific disciplines (e.g., atmospheric chem...
CONTINUE READINGDelta news roundup
It's been a busy and discouraging ten days for those interested in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta as either an ecosystem or a water source. The San Francisco Chronicle reported that the return of fall chinook salmon to the Sacramento River hit a record low last year. The Pacific Fishery Management Council released a gloomy preseason estimate of 2009 stock abundance, leading to speculation that there might again be no commercial ocean salmon fishing this year. The B...
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