Academia

No Butts About It

The New York Times has reported on a stealth environmental crisis, one that the public has heretofore regarded as the mere detritus of a serious public health controversy. But discarded cigarette butts constitute a major environmental crisis as well, and public attention to that crisis is long overdue. In its recent story, the Times notes …

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War and the Environment

Memorial Day is an apt date to think about how wars, along with their other tragic costs, impact the environment. As Peace Pledge reminds us: Images of devastated battlefields are all too familiar. A German officer in 1918 described ‘dumb, black stumps of shattered trees which still stick up where there used to be villages. …

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The Latest Issue of ELQ

As usual, an intriguing collection of articles, all available free on-line: The Silver Anniversary of the United States’ Exclusive Economic Zone: Twenty-Five Years of Ocean Use and Abuse, and the Possibility of a Blue Water Public Trust Doctrine Mary Turnipseed, Stephen E. Roady, Raphael Sagarin, & Larry B. Crowder Read Article (PDF) Reducing Greenhouse Gas …

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Another Env Law Prof Goes to Washington

President Obama announced his intention to nominate Chris Schroeder to head the Office of Legal Policy at DOJ.  As the announcement indicates, Schroeder is an eminent authority on environmental law: Christopher H. Schroeder is Charles S. Murphy Professor of Law and Professor of Public Policy Studies, and director of the Program in Public Law at …

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Debating Environmental Issues

The Center for Law, Energy and the Environment (CLEE) sponsored a series of debates and colloquies at Berkeley in the Spring semester, all of which are now available on video: Unleashing the Clean Energy Economy Michael Shellenberger vs. Peter Barnes – February 18, 2009 Environmental Program Town Hall February 19, 2009 Climate Change & the …

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Disaster Law

Disaster issues have several links to environmental law.  Perhaps the most obvious is that climate change is likely to cause a sharp increase in the number of extreme weather events such as floods and heat waves.  Less obviously, disaster law is the flip side of environmental law, concerned with how nature impacts us rather than …

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Educational Equality as an Environmental Issue

This is the first in an occasional series about surprising dimensions of environmental problems. Today’s thesis is that  promoting educational equality in developing countries would be a good thing for the environment.  In other words, environmentalists should favor directing more educational funds to girls rather than following the norm in many countries, which is to …

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Honorary Degree for Joe Sax

We were delighted to learn that Joe Sax, the eminent environmental law scholar, will receive an honorary degree on May 20 from Columbia University. Congratulations, Joe!

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Going to the Dogs? Unfair Attacks on Cass Sunstein

A lot of environmentalists are uncomfortable about Cass Sunstein’s appointment as “regulatory czar” at OMB.  Reasonable people may differ about the validity of those concerns.  But now he’s been attacked from another direction — conservatives eager to paint him as an animal-rights fanatic who wants to ban hunting.  For instance, For one particularly colorful attack, …

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Cap and Trade? Huh??

It turns out that hardly anyone except politicos and policy wonks knows what cap-and-trade means or that it relates to climate change.  According to Rasmussen, Given a choice of three options, just 24% of voters can correctly identify the cap-and-trade proposal as something that deals with environmental issues. A slightly higher number (29%) believe the …

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