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Biden’s Green Team
Here are the six who will lead the way on environment and energy issues.
Biden’s choices to head particular agencies have trickled out over the past few weeks. It’s only when you put them together that you get a sense of the overall time. It’s a very diverse group, all of whom seem to have strong environmental commitments. Pete Buttigieg, Department of Transportation. Buttigieg is a well-known figure from …
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CONTINUE READINGGeoengineering: Ready for its Close-up?
After long being marginalized in climate debates, geoengineering is experiencing a surge in attention — which carries both opportunities and risks.
If you’re a long-time Legal Planet reader, you may have noticed that I weigh in once a year or so to say that geoengineering – active engineered response to global climate change – is going to get prominent, and intensely contentious, soon. Geoengineering? Before continuing, we need a brief aside about names. Even what to …
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CONTINUE READING“Knocking on Our Door”: Wildfires Threaten Mt. Wilson Observatory and San Gabriel Foothill Communities
On Sept. 15, Angeles National Forest reported the Bobcat Fire was within 500 ft. of historic observatory in San Gabriel Mountains
The Bobcat fire blazing in the San Gabriel Mountains is threatening lives and homes, forcing evacuation of communities in foothills clogged with acres of brush dried out by the hottest August ever recorded in California. For flatland Angelenos like me, the fires are both omnipresent and distant, sensed only by the hazy skies and smell …
CONTINUE READINGGuest Contributor Naomi Wheeler: States and Cities Should Prioritize Equity While Building Grid Resilience
Learning from Grid Resilience Threats and Opportunities in California and New York
Electrical grids across the country face a complex series of overlapping threats to grid resilience in 2020. Wildfires and hurricanes have become the new normal as climate change intensifies the magnitude of extreme weather events. These destructive events create widespread systemic shocks for electrical grids already facing several underlying vulnerabilities. In a recent research report, …
CONTINUE READINGAutomakers Love to Use the Great Outdoors to Sell Cars That Pollute National Parks
Auto companies continue campaign against progress on vehicle pollution
At the top of Franklin Pass last week, 11,710 ft above sea level and deep in Sequoia National Park, I stopped to catch my breath. There’s no doubt the altitude was affecting me, but looking back towards the thick inversion layer sitting over the western San Joaquin Valley, I had to wonder to whether pollution …
CONTINUE READINGManaging a Pandemic, Enron-Style
The Administration’s management harkens back to a spectacular business collapse at the turn of the century.
Think of this as a parable. I’ll draw out some parallels at the end with the Trump Administration’s handling of the coronavirus, as detailed in a story in Sunday’s Washington Post. But first I’ll let you make some of the connections yourself. The Trump team’s triumph in 2016 was one of the great upsets in …
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CONTINUE READINGBP’s Surprising Pivot
An oil giant decides to face the future instead of fighting it.
With all that’s going on, it’s easy to miss what would in normal times be major news. On Tuesday, BP announced it was beginning to turn away from the oil business. The most significant thing may be this: BP stock rose after the announcement. BP has already sold its petrochemical business. It also announced that …
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CONTINUE READINGWe All Have a Role in This Fight
Those who fight for the environment must fight for racial justice, as well.
All people have a moral obligation to express outrage about the disgraceful violence against African Americans and about the systemic racism that feeds it. Even more so if one considers oneself to be an environmentalist. A key component of an ecological perspective is an understanding of the interconnection of all living things. Violence against some …
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CONTINUE READINGWhat’s in a Name?
“Climate change”? “Disruption”? “Crisis”? “Emergency”? Why is this so hard?
We seem to have a lot of trouble in coming up with the right name for what’s happening to the world’s climate. We started with “Global Warming.” But that seemed too narrow, because the changes don’t just relate to temperature, and too innocuous, because warming seems like a gentle process. So scientists shifted to “Climate …
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CONTINUE READINGThe Coronavirus and the Commerce Clause
Could Congress mandate CORVID-19 vaccinations? Not if you take some Supreme Court opinions seriously.
If we get a vaccine against a national epidemic, could Congress pass a law requiring everyone to get vaccinated? That very question was asked during the Supreme Court argument in the 2012 constitutional challenge to Obamacare’s individual mandate. The lawyer challenging Obamacare said “no, Congress couldn’t do that.” What’s shocking is that this may have …
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