Emergency? Part 3
Requiring Large-Scale Carbon Capture
We give lots of lip service describing climate change as an emergency or existential threat. According to the Climate Emergency Declaration Organization, 2336 jurisdictions around the world have declared it to be an emergency, but we are not really acting like it. There are many possible emergency actions. I’m looking at 6 that could make a significant difference, are doable, but require real sacrifice and hard choices: Ending financing of fossil...
CONTINUE READINGIndividuals Making a Difference
Two stories of the unknown environmental advocates behind major Supreme Court decisions.
My students often wonder whether they can actually make a difference. I like to tell them the story of Joe Mendelsohn. Mendelsohn, who worked at a tiny, obscure non-profit, decided that EPA needed to address climate change. His efforts, recounted in a book by Richard Lazarus, led to the Supreme Court’s blockbuster opinion in Massachusetts v. EPA. Three decades earlier, a class project by five law students had led to a major win on standing, though a loss on the merit...
CONTINUE READINGUCLA Clinic Submits Amicus Brief in Kern Oil Ordinance Case
Kern County’s efforts to increase drilling could jeopardize the survival of the Temblor legless lizard. The case demonstrates why environmental review must keep pace with emerging science and new information.
The UCLA Environmental Law Clinic has submitted an amicus brief in a case that challenges Kern County’s (the “County”) repeated efforts to streamline oil and gas development without proper regard for myriad environmental harms. The Clinic filed its amicus brief on behalf of Professor H. Bradley Shaffer, Ph. D., one of California’s leading experts on the evolutionary biology, ecology, and conservation biology of amphibians and reptiles. He has published a book...
CONTINUE READINGNot Just About the Climate
The benefits of the energy transition transcend climate.
The main reason to control carbon is to protect the climate. But cleaning up the energy system has plenty of other benefits. Those benefits will flow to people in rural areas as well as urban ones, to national security and international development, and to nature itself. To begin with, there are the health benefits of the energy transition away from fossil fuels. As we clean up our energy system, we simultaneously reduce the tons of pollutants we now produce from bu...
CONTINUE READINGEmergency? Part 2
Renewable Siting and Transmission
We give lots of lip service describing climate change as an emergency or existential threat. According to the Climate Emergency Declaration Organization, 2336 jurisdictions around the world have declared it to be an emergency, but we are not really acting like it. There are many possible emergency actions. I’m looking at 6 that could make a significant difference, are doable, but require real sacrifice and hard choices: Ending financing of fossil fuel projec...
CONTINUE READINGWhat Happened During the Montana Youth Climate Trial
The state argued that Held v. Montana is a boring case about procedure. The kids made a compelling case that climate action is part of Montana’s constitutional obligation to maintain a healthy environment.
The very first American trial of a youth climate lawsuit was hardly blockbuster Court TV, but we learned a lot from the proceedings. The bench trial took place last month in the state capitol, Helena, where 16 youth plaintiffs ages 5 to 22 made the case that Montana’s unwavering promotion of fossil fuels violates the state constitution’s guarantee to a “clean and healthful environment.” As I outlined here, Montana state law prohibits the consideration of g...
CONTINUE READINGThe NEPA Amendments in Nine Blog Posts
Surveying the legal problems of the biggest NEPA changes in the past fifty years.
On June 5, President Biden signed the debt ceiling bill, which provides the first significant rewrite of NEPA since it was passed over fifty years ago. In a series of blog posts, I’ve explored some of the legal issues raised by the amendments. My goal has been highlighting problem areas rather than providing anything like a definitive analysis. Given how new the amendments are and the lack of much guidance at this point, I thought it would be useful to provide an ...
CONTINUE READINGRFK Jr. and Climate Change
Even on the environment, his views are strange and unsettling.
Robert Kennedy, Jr., has polled surprisingly well so far. That may well be a fluke, but it may be worth taking a look at his views at this point. Unlike his views on vaccines, his views on climate change don’t involve blanket denial of science. But they do involve some of the same populist fears of conspiracy by elites. Let’s begin with his deep distrust of EPA, which rivals that of the Republicans who want to abolish it although the reasons are quite different....
CONTINUE READINGCan We Reach Net Zero without Carbon Markets and Offsets?
By presuming markets are the only option for developing and scaling new techniques and technologies we ignore the lessons of history.
The rapid spread of net zero targets in climate policy has been accompanied by a surge of interest in offsetting markets. In our market economies it is easy to presume that net targets will get delivered by offsetting residual emissions against carbon removals. But the Paris Agreement actually only specifies that global aggregate residual emissions be in balance with sinks. Net zero therefore does not require one-to-one matching of units of carbon emitted and removed. ...
CONTINUE READINGAfter Sackett: A Multi-Prong Strategy
The Supreme Court’s wetlands opinion was terrible. Now what we do?
The Supreme Court’s opinion in the Sackett case dramatically curtails the permitting program covering wetlands. We urgently need to find strategies for saving the wetlands the Court left unprotected. We have a number of possible strategies and need to start work on implementing them immediately. Sackett was unquestionably a major blow, reducing federal jurisdiction over wetlands beyond what even the Trump Administration embraced. A wetland is now covered only i...
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