Region: California
Why isn’t Interior publicly releasing its monuments review?
Secretary Zinke announced that his Department has submitted its review of national monuments to the President, but he’s not ready to let you and me see it
Today, the Department of Interior announced that it had sent to the White House its report of the review demanded by an April Executive Order of national monument designations under the Antiquities Act over the last 20 years. In an ordinary world, I would have expected that announcement to be accompanied by a link to …
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CONTINUE READING200 Days & Counting: Environmental Threat Assessment
The Trump Administration presents a barrage of threats to the environment. Which threats are worst?
This is the last in our series on the state of play concerning U.S. environmental protection at this point of the Trump Administration. We can classify threats along three dimensions: the likelihood of harm, the seriousness and irreversibility of the harm, and the irreversibility of the institutional or legal change. Here’s an assessment of our …
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CONTINUE READING200 Days & Counting: State and Local Action
States and cities can do a lot to push back against Trump, but they do face some legal challenges.
In the Trump era, what avenues are open to state and local governments to use self-help to protect the environment? I’ve posted before about the opportunities for state and local governments taking action to protect their own environments. (here and here). Perhaps the most important recent development is the extension of California’s cap-and-trade program to …
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CONTINUE READINGCenter for Ocean Solutions Releases Consensus Statement and Report on the Public Trust Doctrine, Sea Level Rise, and Coastal Land Use in California
Report Analyzes State Public Trust Responsibilities on the Coastline, Coincides With Coastal Commission Staff’s Release of Draft Residential Adaptation Policy Guidance
UPDATE (September 1, 2017): The statement’s drafters have provided a link (shared at the end of the post) for California attorneys who wish to sign on to the statement discussed here. Last month, a group of public trust and coastal land use experts, working under the auspices of the Center for Ocean Solutions, released two …
CONTINUE READINGWhen are markets appropriate tools for sustainably managing groundwater?
New report from Berkeley Law’s CLEE outlines critical considerations for local groundwater markets under SGMA
Locals implementing California’s Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA) are rapidly turning from questions about who will manage groundwater and how they should approach institutional design to next-level questions: What does sustainability mean for a particular basin, and how will local managers achieve it? One of many potential management tools is a local groundwater market. SGMA opens the door …
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CONTINUE READINGNational Monuments: a Rebuttal to Commentators who Support Trump’s Actions to Undo Public Lands Protections
This post is co-authored with Sean Hecht. For the past three months, Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke has been reviewing some of the national monuments designated under the Antiquities Act by Presidents Obama, Bush, and Clinton. Since the end of last year, we and others at Legal Planet have been writing on the scope …
CONTINUE READINGCap-And-Trade Extension A Lifeline For High Speed Rail
Auction proceeds will continue to fund the train and other transit, housing and energy programs
As Cara posted, the California Legislature scored a super-majority victory last night to extend the state’s signature cap-and-trade program through 2030. It was a rare bipartisan vote, although it leaned mostly on Democrats. Lost in the politics is what this means for high speed rail. The system has a fixed and dwindling amount of federal …
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CONTINUE READINGCalifornia Extends its Cap-and-Trade Program Through 2030
It wasn’t pretty, but it passed
What tools will California regulators be able to use to reach the state’s ambitious 2030 climate emissions goal? That commitment, enshrined into law last year, says that California will reduce its statewide greenhouse gas emissions by 40% in the ten years between 2020 and 2030, and forms the core of California’s climate leadership. But important …
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CONTINUE READINGCalifornia Supreme Court Upholds Regional Planning Agency’s Greenhouse Gas CEQA Analysis, and Sets Out Principles to Ensure Better Analysis in the Future
Decision Will Help Ensure Development and Transportation Planning in California Supports GHG Reduction Efforts
In May, Rick Frank posted his reflections on the oral argument in the California Supreme Court on Cleveland National Forest Association v. San Diego Association of Governments (SANDAG), and predicted that SANDAG would win the case. His prediction has proved correct with the release of the Court’s opinion last week – but SANDAG’s narrow win provides a …
CONTINUE READINGThoughts on AB 398
New bill to extend state’s cap-and-trade program is a compromise worth making
The Governor and state legislative leaders announced a deal on a bill to extend the state’s cap-and-trade program to control greenhouse gas emissions through 2030, along with companion legislation to increase emissions reductions for conventional pollutants from major stationary industrial sources (a key point for environmental justice groups). Some leading business groups have endorsed the …
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