Climate Change

Looking Back at COP20: How Should We Feel?

The Lima Accord lets countries name their own price to address climate change. But that doesn’t mean it failed.

As you’ve probably heard by now, this year’s UN climate change conference has produced an agreement, the “Lima Accord.” The Accord invites each of the nearly 200 negotiating countries to develop an “intended nationally determined contribution” (INDC) to reduce its GHG emissions. INDCs represent some step forward from each country–in the words of the Accord, “a progression …

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Can We Control Climate Change and Still Have Economic Growth? (Part I)

What do we mean by “economic growth”? Does it always mean more carbon?

The Washington Post recently had a column arguing that even climate advocates and scientists are in denial, for thinking that we can have economic growth and still fight climate change.  is that true? It’s useful to take some time to think through what we mean by economic growth and how that relates to carbon emissions. …

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Giving Indigenous Peoples a Voice at COP20

Observations from the Lima UN Climate Conference – by Sarah Kozal

This post is by Sarah Kozal, UCLA School of Law Class of 2016, who participated in the Lima COP last week as part of UCLA’s delegation. One surprise of COP20 has been the large presence of indigenous peoples’ issues and voices. In particular, many of the side events at the conference have focused not only …

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Progress at the UN?

A view from the Lima climate COP

The annual Conference of Parties of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change opened this week in Lima, Peru, drawing delegates from around the world, including a few from UCLA Law.  I am in Lima along with Legal Planet blogger Jesse Lueders and three students from our UCLA Environmental Law Clinic, Sarah Kozal ’16, Jacob …

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Our Air is a Lot Cleaner and Prospects for Climate Action a Lot Brighter Thanks to Citizen Suits

Climate change, ozone and mercury rules all the result of citizen suits

Three sets of Obama Administration’s environmental rules are in the news these days:  those on climate change, mercury and ozone.  The President is being praised among environmentalists for his ambitious actions and lambasted by some business and Republican leaders for engaging in a “war on coal.”   Yet lost among the clamor is one key …

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More Thoughts on the US-China Climate Announcement

Ann Carlson and I talk with the New York Times on US politics, Chinese implementation, and the potential impact on India.

Ann Carlson and I talked with Edward Wong from the New York Times last week about the US-China Climate Announcement.  We repost the Q&A here. From Edward Wong, NYT:  The biggest commitments to come out of President Obama’s recent visit to China involved climate change policy. The leaders of the two nations stood beside each …

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Some Unsolicited Advice for Tom Steyer

There were a number of efforts by wealthy individuals and/or Super PACs to affect the midterm election results. Most relevant to this blog, Tom Steyer used tens of millions of his own funds to support candidates that he felt would be more supportive of efforts to address climate change. After the election, the media portrayed …

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A Ray of Hope [Breaking News]

President Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping announced a major deal on climate change this morning.  As summarized by the Washington Post, China, the world’s biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, pledged in the far-reaching agreement to cap its rapidly growing carbon emissions by 2030, or earlier if possible. It also set a daunting goal of …

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The Future of Conservation

Earlier this year I wrote critically about a New York Times op-ed that proposed making the restrictions on development in wilderness areas more flexible in order to allow for adaptation to climate change. This week the Times published what I think is a much more helpful op-ed on the topic of how we should address …

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Political systems and environmental law

The other day I posted about Australia’s repeal of its carbon tax. Australia is not the only country that is going through some retrenchment in environmental law. In Canada, the government made some substantial alterations to the requirements for environmental review for government projects (reducing the scope of the requirement and limiting it to certain …

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