Sierra Club

CEQA and Local Land Use Regulations: Shakedown Street

Local Government Discretion Has Powerful Political Support

Eric’s post the other day about CEQA and local land use regulation states an important and often-overlooked truth: environmental review can only hold up a project if it is discretionary. If local land use regulations state clearly what a developer can and cannot do, then no amount of environmental review could change a decision, and …

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Sierra Club Opposes One Of The Most Important Climate Bills In California

Environmental group whiffs on proposed legislation to allow badly needed residential development near transit

Housing more Californians near transit and not in sprawl areas represents one of the most crucial ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Senate Bill 827 (Wiener) would help do just that, by preventing local governments from zoning people (and homes) out of these prime transit areas. So it was surprising to see an environmental organization …

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Tahoe Regional Planning Agency Wins Big in Ninth Circuit

U.S. Court of Appeals Rejects Challenge to TRPA’s Regional Plan

This week the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency (TRPA) won a major legal victory in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.  A unanimous three-judge panel of that court rejected environmentalists’ challenge to TRPA’s adopted Regional Plan for the Lake Tahoe Basin in Sierra Club v. Tahoe Regional Planning Agency.   The Ninth Circuit decision effectively …

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U.C. Campuses Top Sierra Club’s “Cool Schools” Rankings

U.C. Irvine, U.C. Davis Rank 1 & 2 as Nation’s Greenest University Campuses

The Sierra Club has released its latest rankings of the “greenest” colleges and universities in the United States, titled “Cool Schools 2015.”  The University of California fares extremely well in that survey, with four of its campuses placing in the top 10 of the Sierra Club poll.  U.C. Irvine nabbed the top spot in the …

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Who Is Ernest Moniz?

And why should you care? Moniz is a nuclear physics professor at MIT, the director of the MIT energy project, and at least according to a lot of reports, President Obama’s first choice to head the Energy Department.  Anything not to like about that? Well, lots of environmentalists don’t seem to.  The Daily Beast reports …

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Environmentalists Sue Over New Lake Tahoe Plan: Is the Perfect the Enemy of the Good?

The Sierra Club and a local neighborhood group recently sued the bistate Tahoe Regional Planning Agency, challenging TRPA’s just-adopted Regional Plan for the Lake Tahoe Basin. That development strikes me as unfortunate and counterproductive. Let me briefly explain why. The Lake Tahoe Basin, which straddles the California-Nevada border, has since 1968 been governed under a bistate Compact negotiated …

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Whatever Happened to Environmental Politics?

Mayor Bloomberg’s endorsement of President Obama on climate-change grounds is depressing because it is so surprising.  It tells us something quite bleak that 1) someone had to make clear the relevance of climate to Hurricane Sandy; and 2) someone doing so came as a shock to people.  Indeed, through the campaign, climate has been essentially …

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BREAKING NEWS: Another West Coast Win for PACE Energy Financing

Almost a year later, California wins again in the effort to reverse a federal agency’s 2010 decision that decimated PACE, a promising financing program for residential energy efficiency and renewable investments. Federal District Court Judge Claudia Wilken ruled today that the Federal Housing Finance Authority (FHFA) violated the Administrative Procedure Act’s (APA) notice-and-comment requirement when …

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Why Did Mono Lake Become a Cause Celebre?

Why did saving Mono Lake become such a potent political issue during the late 1970’s and early 1980’s?  For a book I am currently writing on the case, that is a critical question. After all, hundreds of groups — hundreds of environmental groups — seek media oxygen for their cases all the time.  Both nationwide …

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Sierra Club asks Gov. Brown to re-examine AB 32 cap-and-trade

On May 9, Sierra Club requested that Governor Jerry Brown “re-evaluate” the cap-and-trade rule promulgated by the California Air Resources Board.  The Sacramento Bee has some initial reactions and you can read the original letter here.  As noted in our earlier posts, CARB’s cap-and-trade rule has come under judicial scrutiny and its status is somewhat …

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