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So Much for California’s Anti-Sprawl Law

When California passed SB 375 in 2008, the national media swooned and smart growth advocates issued glossy brochures about the law.  SB 375 was intended to curb sprawl, promote more compact and walkable communities served by transit, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions, all through a regional planning process that would coordinate land use plans with …

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Some Simple Arithmetic About Environmental Regulation and the Economy

In absolute terms, environmental compliance costs might be large, but relative to the economy as a whole, they’re not much more than a rounding error.

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Oil and Food

Today’s NY Times has two unusually interesting pieces, one on food and the other on oil. The article about food examines the difficulty of feeding an expanding and more affluent world population in the face of climate change: A rising unease about the future of the world’s food supply came through during interviews this year …

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The Dying Dead

Can something that’s Dead still be dying?  It can if it’s the Dead Sea and if it’s rapidly disappearing.  And it is. Check out this piece from this month’s Scientific American, which details the disappearance of the Dead Sea — which is really a highly saline lake — due to four states (Israel, Jordan, Syria, …

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California Dump Trucks v. CARB

The California Dump Truck Owners Association (“CDTOA”) filed suit in February 2011 against the California Air Resources Board (“CARB”).  The suit alleges that CARB’s Truck and Bus Regulation, which is part of the suite of regulations under AB 32 to address greenhouse gas emissions, is unconstitutional. CARB’s Truck and Bus Regulation sets stricter emissions standards for …

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The question of triage

The latest Delta report issued by the Public Policy Institute of California goes well beyond the Delta. Titled Managing California’s Water: From Conflict to Resolution, the report takes on the entire water management structure set up by state and federal law. There’s a lot in the report, which should be required reading for anyone interested …

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What we’re reading, oceans edition

Cross-posted at CPR Blog. Here’s some of what’s going on in the ocean policy world: BOEMRE is reviewing the first post-moratorium application to drill an exploratory deepwater well in the Gulf of Mexico. As required by a June Notice to Lessees, Shell’s application to drill 130 miles from shore in 2000 to 2900 feet of …

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More Garbage Conservative Constitutional Theory

James Joyner is one of the few conservatives who actually try to come up with intellectually coherent policy positions, and he often does.  So maybe we should give him a pass when he blows it. But wow, is this one a doozy.  The EPA has decided to begin to issue greenhouse gas regulations, as it …

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Clarifying a Cloudy Situation

One of the biggest difficulties in climate models is posed by clouds.  Modelers need to know what kinds of clouds will form, at what altitudes, and with what precipitation resulting.  These turn out to be very hard to calculate, and scientists use heuristic approximations to fill the gaps.  A new study suggests that on the …

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GMOs and German Constitutional Law

The German Constitutional Court has issued an opinion upholding severe restrictions on the use of genetically modified plants. Science reports: “With the possibility to deliberately make changes in the genome, genetic engineering influences the elementary structures of life,” the court wrote. “The consequences of such interventions can be, if any, difficult to undo.” The court …

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