California
Beat the Heat
As Angelenos swelter in historic heatwave, city and county governments seek to cool vulnerable residents
Wildfires sparked by dry lightning storms across California this week are an ominous cap to the state’s historic heat emergency, adding hazardous air quality and evacuation orders to the burdens of the COVID-19 pandemic and economic crisis. Fire risk aside, the heat wave is now entering its most deadly phase. Nationwide, heat kills more Americans …
Continue reading “Beat the Heat”
CONTINUE READINGAutomakers Love to Use the Great Outdoors to Sell Cars That Pollute National Parks
Auto companies continue campaign against progress on vehicle pollution
At the top of Franklin Pass last week, 11,710 ft above sea level and deep in Sequoia National Park, I stopped to catch my breath. There’s no doubt the altitude was affecting me, but looking back towards the thick inversion layer sitting over the western San Joaquin Valley, I had to wonder to whether pollution …
CONTINUE READINGRIP Jim Mahoney, Climate Champion At Bank Of America
Financial executive helped launch UC Berkeley/UCLA Law “Climate Change and Business Initiative”
Jim Mahoney was perhaps an unlikely climate hero. A senior Bank of America and FleetBoston Financial executive for 25 years who tragically passed away this past weekend at the age of 67 (the result of complications from injuries he sustained in a bicycle accident last year), Jim’s work focused on global corporate strategy and public …
Continue reading “RIP Jim Mahoney, Climate Champion At Bank Of America”
CONTINUE READINGNext Steps in U.S.-China Environmental Cooperation
Pressing Both Countries Toward Carbon Neutrality.
U.S.-China relations are perhaps at their lowest point in decades and there is no end in sight at the moment. Each week brings a barrage of new U.S. federal policy measures aimed at China. Against this backdrop, ChinaFile recently asked a group of China experts to opine on the prospects for U.S.-China relations in coming …
Continue reading “Next Steps in U.S.-China Environmental Cooperation”
CONTINUE READINGWhen does a groundwater recharge project NOT need a water right?
by Kate Fritz and Nell Green Nylen
Groundwater recharge projects already play an important role in California. That role is about to expand rapidly, as local groundwater managers begin to take more concrete actions to meet their responsibilities under California’s landmark Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA). As we mentioned in our last post, an important part of developing a successful recharge project …
Continue reading “When does a groundwater recharge project NOT need a water right?”
CONTINUE READINGWater right permitting options for groundwater recharge: Avoiding unintended consequences
by Kate Fritz and Nell Green Nylen
Efforts to boost groundwater recharge are critical to making California’s limited, and increasingly volatile, water resources go further. Recharge is playing a growing role in maintaining groundwater as an effective drought reserve and in slowing or reversing the effects of years of unsustainable groundwater pumping. But implementing recharge projects is not easy. Water managers face …
CONTINUE READINGGuest Blogger John Graham: California Court Decision Will Affect Future Use of Carbon Offsets to Mitigate Emissions of Development
The California Court of Appeal Rules San Diego County’s Climate Action Plan Violates CEQA
The challenge to San Diego County’s Climate Action Plan (“CAP”) in Golden Door has been closely watched by many interested in the use of carbon offsets to mitigate GHG impacts in California. Simply put, carbon offsets are mechanisms that reflect off-site GHG reductions—from activities like reforestation—that can, in some cases, compensate for a project’s GHG …
CONTINUE READINGWasting Away in Methaneville
Another Trump rollback gets slapped down in court.
A week ago, a federal district court overturned yet another ill-conceived rollback by the Trump Administration. The case, California v. Bernhardt, involved releases of methane, a potent greenhouse gas. The legal flaws in the rollback by the Bureau of Land Management, are all too typical of the Administration’s work product. The Administration has repeatedly lost …
Continue reading “Wasting Away in Methaneville”
CONTINUE READINGTrump Administration’s Court Challenge to California-Quebec Cap-and-Trade Agreement Again Rejected
U.S. District Court Rejects Feds’ Latest Constitutional Attack on California’s Climate Change Initiative
Three strikes and you’re out. That adage, particularly timely given Major League Baseball’s belated start of its 2020 season this week, is just as apt when it comes to litigation as it is to our nation’s pastime. For the second time in four months, U.S. District Court Judge William Shubb has rejected a constitutional challenge …
CONTINUE READINGMembers of Congress Oppose Trump Administration’s Attempt to Revoke California’s Clean Car Standards
UCLA Law’s Frank G. Wells Environmental Law Clinic files a brief on behalf of 147 members of Congress in the D.C. Circuit
California has long led the fight against pollution from passenger vehicles, setting its first car emissions standards in 1966 before federal rules were established. After the Clean Air Act was passed in 1970, California retained authority to establish a series of more stringent vehicle emissions rules—with the most recent iteration of greenhouse gas emissions standards …
CONTINUE READINGJoin Our Mailing List
Climate policy is changing rapidly. Stay in the loop with expert analysis via email Monday - Friday.
