Pika next test for the ESA?
If you think the polar bear wrangling has been fun, stay tuned. FWS has announced that it will review the status of the American pika to determine if listing is warranted (hat tip: EarthJustice). The pika, also known as the "rock rabbit," is a cute little creature found in the mountains of the western U.S. and Canada. The key threat to the pika is global warming While Obama's Interior Department has disappointed biodiversity advocates with its decision not to revoke the...
CONTINUE READINGRagging on Climate Change
An White House document surfaced today relating to EPA's proposed finding of endangerment. The document is unremittingly critical of EPA. Some of the criticisms relate to fairly narrow points such as whether EPA should have addressed six greenhouse gases or only four. Other issues are more basic. The document displays stunning ignorance of or disdain for law. It suggests that the EPA should hold back from making an endangerment finding on the ground that "an...
CONTINUE READINGESA in the Everglades
There's something for everyone to like (and to dislike) in the Eleventh Circuit's decision in Miccosukee Tribe v. United States. The case involved the Army Corps of Engineers' management of south Florida's extensive plumbing system. Compliance with the Endangered Species Act in operating the S-12 gates in the Central and South Florida project poses a challenge because the needs of two listed species are tough to reconcile. The Everglades snail kite (pictured), describ...
CONTINUE READINGThe virtual carbon footprint
Is your computer saving the environment or destroying it? Computer use has become a major energy sink both in the U.S. and worldwide. And it's not just the computer on your desk. Duncan Graham-Rowe reports in New Scientist that the internet, including data centers as well as computers and peripherals linked to those centers "could be responsible for as much as 2 per cent of all human-made CO2 emissions, putting it on a par with the aviation industry." And as use of the i...
CONTINUE READINGCap and Trade? Huh??
It turns out that hardly anyone except politicos and policy wonks knows what cap-and-trade means or that it relates to climate change. According to Rasmussen, Given a choice of three options, just 24% of voters can correctly identify the cap-and-trade proposal as something that deals with environmental issues. A slightly higher number (29%) believe the proposal has something to do with regulating Wall Street while 17% think the term applies to health care reform. A plu...
CONTINUE READINGThe Great Yucca Mountain Debacle
Over twenty years ago, the Supreme Court accepted the Nuclear Regulatory Agency's assurances that it would find a safe method for long-term disposal of nuclear waste. Consequently, the NRC was allowed to assign a zero to the risk of any radioactive discharge. As it turns out, this was an empty promise. The solution that the government settled on was permanent underground storage at Yucca Mountain. Many years of planning and litigation and many billions of dolla...
CONTINUE READINGThe Long Environmental Shadow of Palsgraf
Palsgraf is a case known to every American law student. It involves a bizarre accident: a train employee negligently caused a passenger to drop his bag, which contained fireworks, which went off, which caused freight scales at the other end of the platform to fall over, which hit Mrs. Palsgraf and caused her emotional distress. Justice Cardozo's famous opinion for the New York Court of Appeals held that Mrs. Palsgraf couldn't recover, essentially because this chain...
CONTINUE READINGA New Website on Climate Economics
Real Climate Economics offers a wealth of information from a pro-regulatory perspective: The Real Climate Economics website offers a reader’s guide to the real economics of climate change, an emerging body of scholarship that is consistent with the urgency of the problem as seen from a climate science perspective. As the climate policy debate intensifies, economic analysis is playing an increasingly central role. The case for inaction is no longer argued on the grou...
CONTINUE READINGFollow the money
EPA has released its 2010 budget request. EPA is seeking $10.5 billion,which it describes as "the highest level of funding for EPA in its 39-year history," and which Science's Erik Stokstad says (subscription required) would be "a whopping 38% increase over last year’s budget." Nearly $4 billion would go toward revolving funds to support state investments in water infrastructure (that's in addition to $6 billion already dedicated to that purpose by the American Reinves...
CONTINUE READINGPolar bears, wolves, and Obama’s Interior Department
Environmentalists have been absolutely thrilled with the EPA under the leadership of President Obama and Administrator Lisa Jackson. The Department of Interior under Secretary Ken Salazar has drawn more mixed reviews so far. (Dan Tarlock and I wrote about the first 100 days at Interior on the Center for Progressive Reform blog.) Recent news out of Interior has led environmental groups to question the Department's commitment to conservation. From the outside, I find it...
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