Region: California
Peter Douglas, RIP
Peter Douglas, who did more than anyone else to preserve the California coastline, has died at the age of 69. Rick and I discussed his retirement a few months ago here and here. He will be sorely, sorely missed.
CONTINUE READINGNew paper on California’s cap-and-trade auction revenue
The Emmett Center on Climate Change and the Environment has just released a new paper that describes how California law may limit the ability of California’s legislature to allocate revenue from the upcoming cap-and-trade auctions. Written by fellow bloggers Cara Horowitz, Sean Hecht, Ann Carlson and myself, the paper is titled Spending California’s Cap-and-Trade Auction …
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CONTINUE READINGHow CEQA Saved Mono Lake
Environmental lawyers and policy wonks know that the California Supreme Court’s famed decision in Nat’l Audubon Soc’y v. Superior Court, better known as the Mono Lake case, saved California’s second-largest lake from drying up. And to some extent this is true: I am working on a full-length book about the case, and so far that story seems to check out. …
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CONTINUE READINGWill California’s Cap and Trade Program Stimulate Innovation?
Holly’s latest post about a new study showing that cap-and-trade programs have not led to technological innovation ends with a cautionary note that raises the key question about innovation and cap-and-trade programs to reduce greenhouse gas emissions: These results [showing no innovation] don’t mean that cap-and-trade has no role to play in policies directed at climate …
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CONTINUE READINGStopping High Speed Sprawl
California Governor Jerry Brown has doubled down on his support for the state’s proposed high speed rail system, despite the uncertainty about how to pay for it and growing public opposition. But who can blame him? If the rail system does get built, it will be the defining infrastructure project in the state for generations …
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CONTINUE READINGExploring Policies to Promote Local Renewables
Last July, California Governor Jerry Brown held a conference, hosted by the Luskin Center at UCLA, to launch his initiative to achieve 12,000 megawatts of local renewable energy projects in California by 2020. Local renewables, often called distributed generation, are projects no larger than 20 megawatts located close to customer demand. Berkeley Law’s Center for …
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CONTINUE READINGThe Delta 101: Of Levees, Canals & Whiskey
Nearly four out of five Californians do not know what the Delta is, according to a January 2012 poll. That’s 78 percent of the population. And 86 percent of southern Californians have never heard of it. Yet, 25 million people and 3 million acres of farmland rely on the Delta for at least a portion …
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CONTINUE READINGNew Pritzker Brief on Green Chemistry
If you have not yet seen it, I encourage you to check out our newest Pritzker Policy Brief, on California’s Green Chemistry regulations. Written by our own Timothy Malloy, Toxics in Consumer Products takes a critical look at these new regulations. Fellow blogger Matt Kahn mentioned the other day that he was a big fan of California’s …
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CONTINUE READINGCalifornia’s Attorney General Steps Up Environmental Enforcement Efforts
A recent development worth noting is California Attorney General Kamala Harris’ increased profile when it comes to environmental enforcement. Harris, the first woman and minority Attorney General in California history, had a busy first year in office. Her razor-thin election win in November 2010 took over a month to be confirmed, delaying her transition from …
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CONTINUE READINGNinth Circuit Dumps U.S. Forest Service’s Sierra Plan, Bureaucratic-Speak
The U.S. Court of Appeals recently issued a major decision invalidating the U.S. Forest Service’s 2004 Plan directing the USFS’s management of the 11 national forests (totaling 11.5 million acres) in the Sierra Nevada range. A divided Ninth Circuit panel found that the environmental impact statement accompanying the Bush Administration plan–which loosened logging and grazing …
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