Don’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...
CONTINUE READINGThe importance of outside advisors and career staff
Dan posted recently about the decision remanding EPA's latest revision of the particulate NAAQS, American Farm Bureau v. EPA. One thing that struck me reading the decision is the powerful role played not only by outside advisory groups but also by career agency staff. Even if they are overridden by the political decisionmakers, the views of independent advisors and career staff rightly significant weight in judicial review. This case consolidated environmental, state, a...
CONTINUE READINGTwo Cheers for Clean Coal
I think it's terrific that the Coen Brothers are making funny, effective ads against relying on "clean coal" as part of the US energy program. But I worry that the clean energy community is really missing the boat here. Clean coal research and development is absolutely crucial in fighting climate change not for us, but for India and China. India has the fourth largest reserves of coal in the world -- most of it very dirty, with high ash content. It currently imports 70%...
CONTINUE READINGObama’s Progressive Tax and Energy Policy
Though the budget released yesterday by the Obama Administration was short on details, it was long on big pronouncements that fundamentally shift federal policy in important areas. On the climate change front, the budget for the first time reveals the administration's thinking on how it would distribute money raised from allowances issued under a proposed cap and trade scheme to regulate carbon emissions. Obama's priorities on climate change are welcome news -- aggress...
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