Climate Change
Frogs, Boiling Water, and Climate Change: For the Record
Catching up on my LegalPlanet reading after being gone for a couple of weeks (and who doesn’t do that first?), I noticed Dan’s post referencing the famous story about frogs not jumping out of hot water if you put them in when it’s tepid. Referring to humanity’s inability to combat climate change, Dan asks: “are humans smarter than …
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CONTINUE READINGThe Debt Burden on Future Generations
According to GOP.gov, [T]he amount of debt placed on the backs of children born today is about to explode. If nothing is done, our generation will have the sad legacy of being the first to lower the standard of living of the next generation. . . . Unless drastic actions are taken to reduce spending …
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CONTINUE READINGA Nation of Frogs?
It is said that, if you put a frog in a pot of boiling water, it immediately jumps out and is saved. But if you put a frog in a pot of cold water and gradually warm it, you can boil the frog without it ever realizing that it’s being cooked. It’s not hard to …
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CONTINUE READINGCalifornia Slowing Down on Cap and Trade
Yesterday, Mary Nichols slipped a bit of a bombshell into testimony before the California Senate Select Committee on the Environment, the Economy and Climate Change. She announced that the state’s Air Resources Board is planning to “initiate” the cap and trade program in 2012 but not “start the requirements for compliance” until 2013. This effectively …
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CONTINUE READINGThe Supreme Court on Climate Torts — A Second Look
Let’s begin with the bad news. The plaintiffs lost, eliminating one possible tool in combating climate change. That doesn’t seem like a big loss to me, because I’ve always thought that the defendants’ best argument was that the federal common law is displaced by the Clean Air Act. It’s an easy argument to make based …
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CONTINUE READINGCourt allows California to continue developing cap and trade program pending appeal
This just in: Late today, a California appellate court granted the State’s request to stay (in other words, lift), pending appeal, the injunction issued by the lower court in Ass’n of Irritated Residents vs. CARB, the environmental justice community challenge to California’s work so far under its Global Warming Solutions Act (AB 32). Absent any …
CONTINUE READINGSupreme Court Rejects States’ Climate Change Nuisance Lawsuit
The Supreme Court today issued its long-awaited decision in an important climate change case, American Electric Power v. Connecticut. http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/10pdf/10-174.pdf As expected, the Court rejected a public nuisance lawsuit that a coalition of states and private land trusts had brought against the owners of Midwestern coal-fired power plants, challenging their massive greenhouse gas emissions on …
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CONTINUE READINGA Threat to National Security
Many people are unaware of the problem or else in denial, but America faces a serious, insidious threat from a source known to experts as al Qaerbon. Working quietly, al Qaerbon has laid plans to seize miles of America’s coasts, flood farms and cities, cut off needed water in dry areas, and even undermine the …
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CONTINUE READINGAir Resources Board Releases New Environmental Assessment of Cap and Trade to Comply with Judge’s Order
The California Air Resources Board (CARB) is covering all its bases in responding to a judge’s order that CARB violated the California Enviornmental Quality Act (CEQA) in adopting its scoping plan to implement AB 32 (the state’s climate change legislation). As I reported last week, CARB has won an order from the appeals court allowing the state …
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