Public Policy is Spurring Enormous Growth in the Windpower Industry – Don’t Stop Now
Worldwatch Institute reports that windpower capacity worldwide increased by 27,051 megawatts in 2008, bringing total installed capacity over 120,000 megawatts. The United States showed the greatest growth, adding 8,358 megawatts to make a current total of 25,170 megawatts. That’s a 50% increase in one year! The contribution that the U.S. windpower makes to overall domestic supplies is still relatively modest: optimistically, about 66 million megawatt hours per yea...
CONTINUE READINGWhy won’t Arnold back smog checks for motorcycles?
This is a law blog, so call this post Easy Rider v. Planet Saver. The California legislature is considering a bill (SB 435, sponsored by Sen. Fran Pavley of the clean-car "Pavley Regs" fame) requiring motorcyles to undergo bienniel smog checks, just like cars and trucks do. The bill would take aim at a significant remaining source of smog-forming emissions. Who knew motorcycles were this dirty? This from the LA Times: Motorcycles account for 3.6% of registered v...
CONTINUE READINGChemical Policy and Homeland Security Redux
The Bureau of National Affairs reported recently that the House Homeland Security Committee is considering draft legislation that would require major chemical facilities to evaluate the use of inherently safer design to reduce chemical security risks. Generally speaking, inherently safer design attempts to reduce risks associated with the storage and use of hazardous chemicals by using safer substitute chemicals or processes, or by minimizing the amount or nature of th...
CONTINUE READINGThe Supreme Court’s recent Superfund decision may have a significant impact on future cleanups
As Dan has noted, on Monday the U.S. Supreme Court issued an opinion in a widely-watched case interpreting CERCLA, the Superfund law. (Dan posted some brief thoughts about the opinion, BURLINGTON NORTHERN & SANTA FE RAILWAY. CO V. UNITED STATES.) Dan says that the part of the opinion dealing with apportionment of liability "does not purport to establish any new principles but does display a more favorable attitude toward apportionment than many lower co...
CONTINUE READINGThe Ninth Circuit: 0-for-the Supreme Court Term
It's been a very rough U.S. Supreme Court Term for the Ninth Circuit. Four of the five major environmental cases on the Supreme Court's docket this year emanate from the Ninth Circuit. With the justices' issuance of their major CERCLA decision in Burlington Northern this week, four of those environmental cases have now been resolved, including three from the Ninth Circuit. (The other two decided Ninth Circuit cases are Winter v. NRDC [the so-called "Navy sonar" case] an...
CONTINUE READINGA Supreme Court Speed-Bump for Coeur Alaska
With the U.S. Supreme Court's issuance of its major CERCLA opinion yesterday in Burlington Northern, the Court has now decided four of the five major environmental cases on its docket this Term. But a little-noticed order from the Court--also issued yesterday--suggests that the Court is struggling mightily with the fifth and final case, Coeur Alaska, Inc. v. Southeast Alaska Conservation, Nos. 07-984 & 07-990. Coeur Alaska raises some fascinating issues about how t...
CONTINUE READINGNEPA: middle-aged, but still vigorous
The National Environmental Policy Act, which became law on January 1, 1970, is the oldest of the major federal environmental laws. It has been a model for environmental assessment laws in numerous states and other nations, but it still comes in for a lot of criticism at home. Some criticisms are surely justified. As Dan pointed out here, NEPA has yet to fulfill the promise of its lofty goals. NEPA has never quite managed to make environmental impacts central to federal ...
CONTINUE READINGSection 7 status quo reinstated
Last week, Interior Secretary Salazar and Commerce Secretary Locke issued a press release announcing that they were withdrawing the Bush administration's midnight rules relaxing the ESA section 7 consultation requirements. (Background on the Bush rules is here, here, and here.) The notice formalizing that decision has now been published in the Federal Register. As Congress authorized them to do in the omnibus spending bill, the Secretaries have flat-out withdrawn the Bus...
CONTINUE READINGMarketing climate change policies
Writing in the New York Times last week, John Broder reported that ecoAmerica, described as "a nonprofit environmental marketing and messaging firm in Washington," has been researching the best rhetoric to build political support for legislation addressing greenhouse gas emissions. I confess that this story makes me a bit queasy. As an academic, I'm committed to the notion that at some level ideas should substantively speak for themselves, and that no one should be ...
CONTINUE READINGYou do need a weatherman to know which way the political winds blow
When I was in Spain in 1993, an older man there complained to me about an unusual rain storm during the normally-dry summer. "It's the fault of you Americans and radiation from your nuclear bomb," he told me, half-teasingly. Little did he know that he was proving the thesis of a new study by NYU professors Megan Mullin and Patrick J. Egan. They found that people's opinions on climate change tend to vary with local weather events. The estimated effect of weather on be...
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