Community Solar: The Systemwide Benefits
The debates over community solar program design are fascinating sites of struggle over which values should drive decision-making.
Electricity regulation has traditionally been defined by a relatively narrow public interest prerogative: ensuring just and reasonable rates for reliable electric service. The call to decarbonize, however, has injected a new diversity of values into the conversation. Transforming the electric power system to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is opening new opportunities to elevate values like community or public ownership and resource conservation as well. The debates ...
CONTINUE READINGEnvironmental Lawyering Today
If you’d like to defend the environment as a lawyer, you should take a broad view of what that means.
Earthjustice has a great motto: “Because the earth needs a good lawyer.” People tend to equate environmental lawyering with working for Earthjustice or another environmental group like the NRDC. And that’s a great way that lawyers can help the environment. But it’s far from being the only way. In fact, groups like Earthjustice account for only a small fraction of environmental lawyers. Here are some of the alternative paths. First, lawyers work at all le...
CONTINUE READINGShould We Be Upset If Candidates Don’t Provide Concrete Policy Plans?
Policy specifics give me something to write blog posts about. But how much should they matter to voters?
There’s been a drumbeat of criticism of the presidential candidates for their lack of concrete climate proposals. Some of the recent criticism has been of Harris, but you can’t exactly call Trump a policy wonk either. I actually am a policy wonk, so I’d certainly like to see the specifics. But is this something the public should care about? After all, you don’t need specifics to know that Trump and Harris have very different views about climate and energy. ...
CONTINUE READINGEnvironmental Bills at the 10-yard Line
Now that the legislative session has wrapped, the ball is in the Governor’s hands. Here are some of the environmental bills he could sign by September 30.
The California legislative session wrapped up on Saturday, August 31st at midnight, with legislators working until the clock struck twelve. As usual, it was an exciting night to watch. Unlike most years, there seemed to be more of a rush at the end to reach agreement on some of the major issue areas, as well as a back-and-forth with the Governor about starting a special session focused on gas prices, and even more fighting and filibustering efforts than usual. Yes, l...
CONTINUE READINGRightwing Authoritarianism vs the Environment
In the U.S. and elsewhere, rightwing authoritarians oppose climate action. That's not a coincidence.
Project 2025 favors authoritarian presidential rule. It also wants to destroy environmental regulation, especially climate law. That’s not a coincidence. The combination of authoritarianism, extreme conservative ideology, and anti-environmentalism is common globally, not just in U.S. politics. There’s no logical connection between a belief in authoritarian government, upholding traditional hierarchies, and views about protecting the environment or the reality of...
CONTINUE READINGThe Zombie Myth of Job-Killing Regulations
Some ideas never die, no matter how much evidence piles up against them.
With the Labor Day weekend coming up, let's talk about jobs. Some myths are like zombies in two ways. They refuse to lie down and die, not matter what you do. And if you aren't careful, they can eat your brain. An example is the idea that environmental regulation kills jobs. Tragically, this brain worm seems hard to root out. But the evidence doesn't support it. Consider what happened to manufacturing jobs under Trump and Biden, putting aside the COVID era. Trump ...
CONTINUE READINGThe Tragedy of Indifference
This election will have huge consequences for climate change. Sadly, that doesn’t seem to matter that much at the polls.
Some observer from Mars might expect that climate change would be a central issue in the campaign. There is perhaps no other issue where the views of the major candidates are so far apart. And there is perhaps no other issue of such long-term importance. But of course our hypothetical Martian would be wrong. Climate change is at most an afterthought in electoral politics. This is not necessarily because the public is unaware that the climate is changing. In a poll...
CONTINUE READINGCalifornia Pulls Back On Sustainable Aviation Fuels
Air Resources Board abruptly withdraws proposal to mandate low-carbon jet fuel
California regulators had an opportunity this year to be a global leader on requiring airplanes to use low-carbon jet fuel. But the Air Resources Board announced earlier this month that it will back off from its earlier proposal to require jet fuel providers to decarbonize, through the agency's landmark low carbon fuel standard program. Why the change? The agency's official explanation was a head scratcher, noting that jet fuel suppliers could avoid having to actually...
CONTINUE READINGTrump’s Replacement for Project 2025: The “Other” MAGA Plan
It's not Project 2025, but the "America First Agenda" is worse in some ways.
Trump has attempted to disavow the unpopular Project 2025 and distance himself from the Heritage Foundation, the primary author. In the meantime, another think tank has risen to prominence in Trump World, the America First Policy Institute. It is poised to play a major role in his transition team. The AFPI’s views aren’t expressed as stridently but share Project 2025’s philosophy. In its attack on the administrative state, the AFPI seems if anything more radica...
CONTINUE READINGClean Air and the Turbocharged Shadow Docket
Guest Contributors Sean Donahue & Megan Herzog write that coal advocates offer troubling new grounds for the Supreme Court to stay EPA’s carbon pollution standards.
The Supreme Court is currently considering eight emergency (or “shadow docket”) requests from coal advocates (coal-mining companies, coal-burning electricity generators, and allied State attorneys general led by West Virginia) to bar implementation of new EPA rules limiting carbon pollution from coal- and gas-burning power plants while legal challenges to the rules proceed—what is known as a “stay” of the rules. EPA filed its opposition earlier this week....
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