Climate Change

Guest Contributors Rosa Hayes and Samantha Peltz: Silver Linings in the 9th Circuit’s Juliana Decision

Juliana litigation youth plaintiffs

Juliana Litigation Provides Clues for Establishing Standing in Future Cases

For many aspiring environmental litigators, such as ourselves, the bold Juliana litigation was the little-case-that-could: it presented a novel constitutional theory to redress the climate crisis, survived a motion to dismiss against all odds, and went up to the Supreme Court not once, but twice. But on January 17, 2020, Juliana hit a significant roadblock …

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Climate Action in the States

Climate progress continued despite Trump

Trump’s election in 2016 didn’t halt or even slow action in the states on renewable energy and climate change.  Things have hit “pause” during the pandemic, but that should be only temporary. All of this ferment at the state level should help lay the groundwork for future federal action.  Here’s what’s been happening in some …

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Climate’s Future in the Face of COVID

Even as emissions decrease, climate activists shouldn’t get comfortable

As many have pointed out, air and water pollution have plummeted because of COVID-19. My colleague Ben Harris wrote about the many positive environmental impacts that global-scale quarantine has caused – and they’re truly inspiring. Some have pointed to this massive pollution reduction to illustrate that “we are the virus”. Perhaps the pollution reduction is …

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Grid Experts Weigh In on the Clean Power Plan Repeal and ACE Rule

UCLA Emmett faculty share expert voices in an amicus brief filed last week in the D.C. Circuit

Among the many Trump Administration rollbacks of climate regulation, a big one is its decision to repeal the Clean Power Plan and to replace it with a rule that does almost nothing to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from fossil-fuel-fired power plants. The electricity sector has made significant progress in reducing climate pollution recent years, but …

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Red States, Blue Governors

Democratic governors in deep red states can only do so much.

Democrats flipped a number of statehouses in the past two years.  In some of those states, the new governors have faced GOP legislatures.  Their travails indicate some of the limits of what a new President could accomplish with a GOP Senate. North Carolina, Wisconsin, and Kansas are three cases in point.  I want to ask …

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What Do Tomorrow’s Leaders Think About This Mess?

Listening to student voices on the pandemic, climate change, and the future

One thing I’ve always loved about teaching is the opportunity to see important issues through my students’ eyes. So for my last Climate Law and Policy class at UCLA Law this week, I asked my students to tell me what they are thinking about the future of climate policy in light of today’s global circumstances, …

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Just a Bit More on Earth Day(s) Past and Present

Kudos to the New York Times for Its Stellar Earth Day Coverage–Today & 50 Years Ago

This week, several of my Legal Planet colleagues and I have been posting and musing about Earth Days past, present and future.  As I write this, Earth Day 50 is winding down after a multitude of (largely online) demonstrations and celebrations across the globe. One long-term, disturbing development over the past couple of decades has …

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Green Stimulus?

https://chinapower.csis.org/energy-footprint/

Why so many coal plants are still being built in China.

During this Earth Week, it is encouraging to see glimmers of environmental ambition in various jurisdictions around the world. The EU is rolling out a European Green Deal with the goal of “striving to be the first climate-neutral continent.” South Korea, the world’s 7th largest greenhouse gas (GHG) emitter, recently announced a 2050 net zero …

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Fighting to Preserve the Clean Power Plan

Ted Lamm and Sean Hecht Co-Author Amicus Brief on Behalf of Clean Air Act Expert Tom Jorling

On Monday, Sean Hecht and I filed an amicus brief with the DC Circuit in the legal challenge to the Trump Administration’s attempt to repeal and replace the Clean Power Plan. (We filed the brief in our personal capacities and not on behalf of our respective institutions. Dan Farber also contributed valuable input.) Our client …

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Deferred Planetary Maintenance

It’s easy to put off long-term problems when there’s a crisis.  Much too easy, actually.

Long-term problems get short shrift in a crisis. That’s true of infrastructure repair; it’s also true of climate change.  Like deferred maintenance, climate change just gets bigger the longer it’s put off. I often see the fruits of deferred maintenance on the Berkeley campus. Building conditions are a huge problem at Berkeley. Whenever there’s a …

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