Agriculture
What Threatens Biodiversity?
Are we too worried about climate change to focus on the other problems we know about?
Yesterday, Nature published a noteworthy comment on the biodiversity crisis, written by researchers at the University of Queensland and the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). The piece is based on a study of 8,688 species that are classified on the IUCN’s Red List either as threatened (vulnerable, endangered, or critically endangered) or near-threatened. The main …
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CONTINUE READINGMixed results in CA medical marijuana legislation
New state law to regulate medical marijuana makes important environmental progress, still much to be done
California is moving towards marijuana legalization. This is a good and important thing for a whole host of reasons, but one important reason is the environmental impact of unregulated and illegal marijuana cultivation on the environment – something that has been discussed both in the news and here on Legal Planet. Those impacts include diversion …
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CONTINUE READINGTragedy of the Commons–California Drought-Style
State Farmers Planting New Almond Orchards Despite Critical Water Shortages
Traveling through California’s drought-striken San Joaquin Valley repeatedly over the past year, I’ve been surprised and disheartened to see that Valley farmers continue to convert their agricultural fields to newly-planted almond orchards. (My anecdotal observations have been confirmed by various recent press accounts.) This development is a striking, current example of Garrett Hardin’s Tragedy of …
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CONTINUE READINGMore on the Governor’s war on lawns
The Executive Order misses some golden opportunities for the Golden State to get a handle on agricultural water use
As you no doubt know by now, on April Fools’ Day Governor Brown issued an executive order relying on his emergency powers to impose new statewide restrictions on water use. As has been widely noted in the media (for example by the L.A. Times and Sacramento Bee) and by our own Jonathan Zasloff, Executive Order …
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CONTINUE READINGPrioritizing Livestock Emissions
How do you solve a problem like manure?
Under AB 32, California’s climate change law, “greenhouse gas” is defined to include carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and some fluorinated gases. But the bulk of the state’s efforts to date have focused primarily on the first. CO2 is undeniably the primary offender: It accounts for about three quarters of annual global emissions, and is …
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CONTINUE READINGThe Climate-Nutrition Nexus
The advisory panel on nutrition ruffled some congressional feathers by taking environmental impacts into account. The panel’s report concludes that “a dietary pattern that is higher in plant-based foods, such as vegetables, fruits, whole grains, legumes, nuts, and seeds, and lower in animal-based foods is more health promoting and is associated with lesser environmental impact than is …
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CONTINUE READINGThe environment and marijuana legalization
In the wake of the successful marijuana legalization efforts in Colorado and Washington state, and the success of a number of legalization initiatives on the ballot in the prior mid-term elections, there is a renewed effort to get a legalization measure on the ballot here in California for the 2016 elections. A prior measure in …
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CONTINUE READINGCalifornia Headed for Record Drought: Will Critically-Needed Reforms Follow?
Confronting a Looming Environmental Disaster
The Sacramento Bee’s fine environmental reporter, Matt Weiser, yesterday reported on a looming, major drought facing California and its regional neighbors. The figures aren’t pretty. A persistent high-pressure front stretching over the Gulf of Alaska and most of the Northern Pacific has diverted the normal fall and winter storm track away from California and other …
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CONTINUE READINGThe Emergence of Food Law
As with most holidays, Memorial Day is associated with a traditional food component — in this case, picnics. So this seems like a good occasion to talk about the emerging legal field of food law. According to the Food and Drug Law Institute, about sixty law schools have courses on Food and Drug Law, a …
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CONTINUE READINGNY Times Triples on Climate Change
The NY Times has three op-eds this morning dealing with climate change: An op. ed. by Bruce Usher argues for a clean energy strategy: “The United States still has a very long way to go to curtail emissions, but the states are heading in the right direction, and national energy policy must build on their …
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