Environmental History
What Do You Know About EPA? Test Your Knowledge.
Much of what most people think they know about EPA is wrong.
This test involves a few basics about EPA. See how much you know. 1. What President established EPA? A. Kennedy. B. Johnson C. Nixon D. Clinton 2. When is cost a factor in issuing EPA regulations? A. Whenever allowed by law. B. Under Republican Presidents. C. Only for minor regulations. D. …
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CONTINUE READINGThe First Environmentalist Law Teacher
William Colby (1870-1964), a pioneering figure in the Sierra Club from Berkeley’s past
I’m pretty sure that William E. Colby qualifies as the nation’s first environmentalist law teacher, if only because environmentalism was very young at the time.. Colby was a lecturer on mining law and water law at Berkeley for twenty-one years, retiring in 1936. (That doesn’t make him the first natural resources teacher; Judge Lindley had taught …
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CONTINUE READINGWhat Martin Luther King DIDN’T Say
Issues like the environment and animal rights weren’t on his radar screen.
Since tomorrow is Martin Luther King day, I was curious about whether Dr. King had ever said anything about the environment. When I did a google search, this quotation popped up over and over again: “Never, never be afraid to do what’s right, especially if the well-being of a person or animal is at stake. …
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CONTINUE READINGThe Retrospective Greening of Bill Clinton
Last week, the EPA building was renamed for Bill Clinton. This a bit ironic — not that he was anti-environmental, but the environment wasn’t exactly his top priority. As you may recall, Clinton’s guiding philosophy was expressed by the motto, “It’s the economy, stupid.” There’s no reason to think he has any particular passion about …
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CONTINUE READING“The Past Isn’t Dead…”
“…it’s not even past.” — William Faulkner, Requiem for a Nun. After its excellent special issue on “Oil in American History,” the Journal of American History has done it again. Its new issue includes a State Of The Field Symposium on American Environmental History, with an interpretive essay by the University of Georgia’s Paul S. …
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CONTINUE READINGNorris C. Hundley, Jr., 1935-2013
Environmental scholarship has lost a real giant: Norris Cecil Hundley Jr., a former resident of Pacific Palisades, passed away peacefully on April 28. He was 77. Born to Norris and Helen Hundley on October 26, 1935 in Houston, Texas, Norris is survived by six younger siblings… Norris graduated from Whittier College in 1958. After receiving his Ph.D. …
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CONTINUE READING“The Devil’s Excrement”
That was the phrase used in 1975 by OPEC co-founder and Venezuelan Oil Minister Juan Perez Alfonso to describe crude oil: Perez predicted that it would bring wealth, but also ruin. Fortunately for the rest of us, the Organization of American Historians has devoted the most recent issue of the Journal of American History to pursue its …
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CONTINUE READINGOn This Date in History
Exactly forty-two years ago, President Richard M. Nixon signed the National Environmental Quality Act into law on January 1, 1970. Among other remarks, he had this to say: [A] major goal, when you talk about New Year’s resolutions, I wouldn’t say for the next year but for the next 10 years–and I don’t mean that …
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CONTINUE READINGThe First Federal Environmental Law Decision
Of course, it’s a bit arbitrary to pick one case as the first environmental law decision. Many people would probably name the Scenic Hudson opinion, but my nominee would be a decision many decades earlier: Woodruff v. North Bloomfield Gravel Mining Co., 18 F. 753 (C.C.Cal. 1884). What makes it reasonable to call this the …
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CONTINUE READINGWhen We Found the Right Words
It’s hard to talk about something if you don’t have the right words to designate it easily. So it’s interesting to look for the first appearance for some of the key words in the legal literature. Presumably, this words were in non-legal use a bit earlier, but their first use in law reviews tells us …
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