NRDC

In Praise of the 9-0 Supreme Court Loss: LA Port’s Clean Trucks Program lives on

If you’re an environmental group and you find yourself in front of today’s Supreme Court, in some sense you’ve already lost. Nothwithstanding the 2007 Mass v EPA victory for climate change regulation, the Supremes tend not to look kindly, lately, on environmental interests. (Richard Lazarus has argued that the record of NEPA losses at the …

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Guest Blogger Miriam Seifter: The Environmental Dimension of American Trucking

On Tuesday, the Supreme Court heard argument in American Trucking Associations, Inc. v. City of Los Angeles, a case addressing the preemptive scope of the Federal Aviation Administration Authorization Act (FAAAA).  Over at Scotusblog, I’ve discussed the two relatively technical questions presented in the case.  The first asks whether two provisions in the Port of …

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Emmett Center and NRDC Publish New Report on the Environmental, Energy, and Fiscal Benefits of Smart Roofs

My colleague and co-blogger Cara Horowitz has just published a new report on the potential benefits of adoption of “smart roofs” throughout Southern California.  Looking Up: How Green Roofs and Cool Roofs Can Reduce Energy Use, Address Climate Change, and Protect Water Resources in Southern California, co-authored with UCLA Law alumnus Noah Garrison of NRDC, …

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So Much for California’s Anti-Sprawl Law, Ctd.

My post on the shortcomings of SB 375, California’s anti-sprawl law, generated a swift response from NRDC’s Amanda Eaken and TransForm’s Stuart Cohen, two smart growth advocates for whom I hold a lot of admiration and respect.  In their detailed post, which is largely a critique of the San Diego Association of Government’s (SANDAG) sustainable …

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A Judicial Setback for PACE Energy Efficiency and Renewables Financing

Many moons ago, I blogged about the saga of the PACE (Property Assessed Clean Energy) financing program and the lawsuits to preserve it. As a quick review, PACE allows municipal governments to use funds from the bond market to help property owners finance energy efficiency retrofits and renewable energy arrays on their property. The property …

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BP spill lawsuit complaint and link to early analysis

Here’s the complaint in the newly-filed lawsuit the United States filed against BP today, which I summarized earlier in this post. And NRDC’s David Pettit has written an interesting blog post with some initial thoughts about timing and choice of defendants in the lawsuit.

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Feds re-engage on the Delta

Last week brought a lot of good California water news. Restoration of the San Joaquin River took a giant step forward, as the first flows were returned to the channel in accordance with a settlement agreement negotiated in 2006, ending years of litigation by NRDC. As Steve and I noted, removal of four dams on …

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Atrazine in drinking water

Atrazine is suddenly very much in the news. Today’s New York Times features a major story about whether the EPA’s current standard for acceptable levels of atrazine in drinking water is tight enough to protect human health. Yesterday’s Peoria Journal carried a story about a class action lawsuit filed in Illinois state court against Syngenta, …

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I’ll gladly tell you Thursday if your beach is safe today…

Each year, NRDC publishes a report on the sometimes-foul state of our beachwater nationwide.  This year’s Testing the Waters analysis shows that people are still regularly swimming in water with unsafe levels of E Coli and other pathogens, and that thousands of people likely get ill every year from a day at the beach.  In the northeast …

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Acid oceans coming to a beach, and theater, near you

Global warming has gotten so much attention lately that the public has largely overlooked another, independent consequence of rising CO2 concentrations: acidic oceans.  As discussed by Dan earlier this year, for many years the oceans have been silently absorbing CO2 and thereby buffering against even higher atmospheric GHG levels, staving off more warming — but with potentially devastating consequences …

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