Trump’s War on Cities
The Administration is devoted to destroying urban life: that puts it with many of history's worst regimes
I just finished up Ian Buruma’s and Avishai Margalit’s excellent book, Occidentalism: The West in the Eyes of Its Enemies, and it struck me that we need to think of Donald Trump’s despoilation of the environment in a broader perspective: his administration seeks to fundamentally change both the natural and the human environment. Trump clearly has declared war on that half of the country that didn’t vote for him, and many of his own devoted followers as well. O...
CONTINUE READINGIs Brazil Ready for COP30? No One Is Ready for COP30
The Drain is a weekly roundup of climate and environmental news from Legal Planet.
It’s officially less than 6 months until COP30 — when tens of thousands of people will descend on the Brazilian city of Belém for the annual UN climate conference — and no one is ready. For one thing, Belém is an impoverished city of 2.5 million that can’t build enough hotels for the 50,000 expected delegates and 150 heads of state that attend Climate Coachella. You may need to book a river boat. More importantly, there is no agreement on how to get ...
CONTINUE READINGNo, DOE, You Can’t Roll Back Product Efficiency Standards
Congress wanted greater energy efficiency over time and banned rollbacks.
The Department of Energy is proposing to rescind key energy efficiency requirements. It is beyond ironic that this is happening at a time when the President has proclaimed an energy emergency. Trump says the grid is struggling desperately to meet surging power demand. That’s a strange time to eliminate regulations that are saving energy. DOE’s action is also illegal, because the law in question has a provision prohibiting rollbacks. DOE is attempting to get ar...
CONTINUE READINGThe $133 Million Bat Tunnel
Here's what permitting reform in the United Kingdom can teach the United States about building and abundance.
"We’ll rip out ‘insane’ environmental rules that block growth.” “We can’t get anything built anymore. Everything takes too long.” “We will streamline environmental obligations. We will limit the cynical legal challenges that block major infrastructure projects. We will strip away the years of consultation that drown builders.” You might well expect these threats and worries were voiced by American politicians and pundits. And you’d be mostl...
CONTINUE READINGEPA Steps Through the Looking Glass
You can’t accuse EPA of hiding the ball. It has announced its new mission: promoting fossil fuels.
According to Trump’s EPA, the greatest day in the agency’s history was not, as you might think, a day when it did something to protect the environment. Instead, according to Trump’s EPA, the agency’s finest moment will be eliminating protections against air and water pollution. The announcement of these rollbacks was, EPA said, “the most momentous day in the history of the EPA.” You might have thought the prime mission of the Environmental Protection Agenc...
CONTINUE READINGWorthwhile Canadian Initiative! Really!
McGill University's Sustainability Academic Network provides a useful -- and potentially crucial -- new platform.
About a week ago I got an email from McGill University's Juan Serpa, asking me to join a new platform -- the Sustainability Academic Network (SUSAN) -- that contains literally thousands of datasets, academic papers, conferences, jobs, grants, local events, and institutes all devoted to sustainability. Great. Happy to do it (especially since they found me through Legal Planet). But there is something more -- and something very important -- going on here: Academics a...
CONTINUE READINGDOJ vs. C&T
What Trump's new lawsuits against two states may mean for California's cap-and-trade program.
As my UCLA Law colleague Ann Carlson described last week, Trump's DOJ has filed two pretty extraordinary lawsuits against the states of Michigan and Hawaii trying to block those states — preemptively — from bringing suit against fossil fuel companies for climate harms. As Ann points out, these DOJ suits are among the first salvos fired as a result of President Trump's April 8 executive order targeting state and local climate efforts. Californians should read DOJ'...
CONTINUE READINGCoastal Act Requires Strict Protection from Harmful Seawalls
Students with UCLA’s Frank G. Wells Environmental Law Clinic are giving testimony before the California Coastal Commission on a critical issue.
As coastal communities up and down California contend with sea-level rise, they’re facing tough decisions about how to update their land use plans. One of UCLA Law’s environmental clinics is helping lead the way. Over the last several months students in the Frank G. Wells Environmental Law Clinic, Maeve Anderson, Mackay Peltzer, and Jacqueline Diaz Madrigal, have been working on behalf of the Surfrider Foundation to research and analyze the City of Pacifica’...
CONTINUE READINGBrazil Steps Ahead of the U.S. on Climate Policy
A new emissions trading system is a major step for Brazilian climate policy.
During the Obama Administration, an effort to create a carbon trading system passed the House but petered out in the Senate. Obama tried to do something similar with the Clean Power Plan, which the Supreme Court rejected. Now Brazil has gone ahead where the U.S. federal government has failed. The country has now started to implement an important law passed in December. Brazil has also filed a new commitment under the Paris Agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emission...
CONTINUE READINGA Stealth Repeal of NEPA
Proposal from House Natural Resources Committee would effectively repeal NEPA
The Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives is working on reconciliation language – legislation that can pass via a majority-vote in the Senate, but only so long as it relates to fiscal matters. It looks like House Republicans are going to try and use the reconciliation process to effectively repeal the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). Draft language that went through mark-up in the House Natural Resources Committee this week would allow proje...
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