Search Results for: NEPA
Stakeholder Engagement in California Offshore Wind Development
State leaders have an opportunity to forge a national example on stakeholder engagement and energy justice.
As California continues to develop plans for floating offshore wind (OSW) implementation, state leaders have an opportunity to forge a national example on stakeholder engagement and energy justice. California can achieve this, not just by (for example) incorporating environmental justice (EJ) principles into agency analysis and planning or by increasing consultation with tribal entities, but …
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CONTINUE READINGDid Biden have to approve the Willow oil project?
ConocoPhillips has existing lease rights. But the Biden administration had tools to curtail those rights to limit harms.
Although the Biden administration has approved the Willow oil drilling project on Alaska’s North Slope—the largest proposed oil drilling on U.S. public land in several decades—the legal questions are far from settled. Much of the media coverage so far has focused on the political dynamics driving the decision (as noted with some alarm here and …
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CONTINUE READING50 Years Ago: Environmental Law in 1973
Five decades back, the country was in the midst of unprecedented environmental ferment.
1973 was at the crest of the environmental surge that swept the United States half a century ago. In the previous three years, Congress had passed NEPA, the Clean Air Act, and the Clean Water Act. The first EPA Administrator took office in 1971. Continuing the legislative wave, 1973 saw the passage of the Endangered …
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CONTINUE READINGLearning to Name Environmental Problems
It was only in the 1960s that the Supreme Court learned to talk about “pollution” and “wilderness.”
There are Supreme Court cases going back a century or more dealing with what we would now consider environmental issues such as preserving nature or air pollution. But when did the Court start seeing filthy rivers and smokey cities as embodiments of the same problem, despite their striking physical differences? And when it did start …
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CONTINUE READINGThe Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals’ 10 Most Important Environmental Law Decisions of 2022
Climate Change, Water Rights, Environmental Justice & Federalism Issues Highlighted the Ninth Circuit’s Prodigious Environmental Docket This Year
I’ve shared in previous posts my view that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit is–after the U.S. Supreme Court–the most influential court in the nation when it comes to environmental and natural resources law. That’s true for two related reasons: first, the sprawling Ninth Circuit encompasses nine different states (including California) and …
CONTINUE READINGCalifornia Offshore Wind Auction Results in Five Provisional Winners
First Lease Auction Held in the Pacific
Katherine Hoff, CLEE Research Fellow, also contributed to this post. On Wednesday, the U.S. Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) announced the provisional winners of the first offshore wind energy lease auction in the Pacific. The five leases—three off of Morro Bay and two off of Humboldt—fetched more than $757 million …
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CONTINUE READINGNational Parks, Climate Change, and Active Management
When should park managers response to fire risk and climate change through active management?
This summer, the Earth Island Institute filed a lawsuit challenging active management projects in Yosemite National Park – those projects involve the cutting of trees to reduce the risk of fire (or that is the explanation of the National Park Service for the projects). The tree cutting was begun this past year, and the National …
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CONTINUE READINGThe Side Deal
How would the Manchin-Schumer deal on permitting impact the environment?
To get Manchin’s vote for the $379 billion in environmental spending in the IRA bill, Schumer and other congressional leaders had to agree to support Manchin’s efforts to speed up the permit system. At this point, all we have is a one-page list of permitting changes that would form the basis of a new bill. …
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CONTINUE READINGWhose Interests Count? And How Much?
Whether to consider harms to foreign countries and future generations is controversial. So is how much weight to give harm to the poor.
Should regulators take into account harm to people in other countries? What about harm to future generations? Should we give special attention when the disadvantaged are harmed? These questions are central to climate policy and some other important environmental issues. I’ll use cost-benefit analysis as a framework for discussing these issues. You probably don’t need …
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CONTINUE READINGAn Abundance Research Agenda
If we need to build lots of things fast to address climate and housing crises, how will we do that?
There’s been a lot of buzz about this column by Ezra Klein in the New York Times. Klein’s basic argument: We need to do a lot of infrastructure and other development projects to make the world a better place. For example, we’ll need to build power lines and renewable projects to address climate change. But …
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