Climate Change
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 …
CONTINUE READINGMore 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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CONTINUE READINGSome 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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CONTINUE READINGA 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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CONTINUE READINGThe 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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CONTINUE READINGPolitical 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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CONTINUE READINGAustralia’s repeal of its carbon tax
A lot of (bad) environmental law news has been coming out of Australia recently. The new Liberal government has attempted to dump dredging spoils on the Great Barrier Reef and open up protected Tasmanian forests to logging. But most importantly, the government has repealed the carbon tax enacted by the prior Labor government. The Australian …
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CONTINUE READINGHuman Fingerprints on Australia’s Record Heatwave
Australia — or at least Australia’s current government — downplays the danger of climate change. But, as a famous physicist once said, “reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.” Last summer in Australia (corresponding to the winter months up here) broke many, many records. it was the hottest summer on record, …
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CONTINUE READINGTwo Voices from the UN Climate Summit Today
A President and a poet on our climate future
If you want a sense of the tone of today’s UN climate summit in NY, check out the remarks by President Obama (pasted below in full) and this remarkable poem, composed and read to the General Assembly today by Kathy Jenil Kajiner of the Marshall Islands. Ms. Kajiner was selected as a key speaker from …
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CONTINUE READINGGuest Blogger David Schraub: Vermont Environmentalists File FTC Challenge over “Double-Counting” RECs
David Schraub is the Darling Foundation Fellow in Public Law at the University of California Berkeley School of Law. Represented by Patrick A. Parenteau and Douglas A. Ruley of the Vermont Law School’s Environmental and Natural Resources Law Clinic, four Vermont residents have petitioned the FTC to investigate alleged misleading marketing practices by Green Mountain …
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