California
Conference On SB 100 & California’s Race To A Carbon-Free Grid
California Lawyers Association Environmental Law Section will hold daylong event on March 28th in Downtown Oakland
The California Lawyers Association’s Environmental Law Section is hosting a conference on Thursday, March 28th in Downtown Oakland entitled “SB 100 and the Race to a Carbon Free Grid in California.” It will feature top officials from the Newsom Administration and other energy experts, including an “Energy 101” pre-panel for attorneys new to the field. …
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CONTINUE READINGWater Rights Administration and Oversight During Past California Droughts
Part 2 in a Series on Improving California Water Rights Administration and Oversight for Future Droughts
In the first post in this series, I talked about why it’s important for the state of California to spend time preparing for future droughts even in wet years like this one. This post examines some of the lessons from past droughts that can inform these preparations. Past droughts have stress-tested California’s water management institutions, …
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CONTINUE READINGWhy is Trump Getting the Cold Shoulder from the Car Companies?
The answer: His rollback promises them little profit and much uncertainty.
Usually, you’d expect a regulated industry to applaud an effort to lighten its regulatory burdens. So you would think that the car industry would support Trump’s effort to roll back fuel efficiency standards for new vehicles and take away California’s authority to set its own vehicle standards. But that effort is being met by silence …
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CONTINUE READINGWhy It’s Important to Prepare for Drought During a Deluge
Part 1 in a Series on Improving California Water Rights Administration and Oversight for Future Droughts
In the midst of the wet winter storms bringing rain and snow to California this year, you might not expect drought preparations to be among the state’s current priorities. And yet, they need to be. In this post, I’ll explore why to set the stage for a blog series that explores what the state can …
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CONTINUE READINGA Legislative Response to California’s Housing Emergency: Senator Skinner’s SB 330
How to Make a Good Bill Even Better
(This post is co-authored by U.C. Davis Law School Professor Chris Elmendorf) Last week, as President Trump harrumphed about the faux emergency on our nation’s Southern border, California State Senator Nancy Skinner introduced a potentially transformative bill that addresses California’s real emergency: the ever-escalating cost of housing in the state’s economically productive metropolitan regions. As …
CONTINUE READINGMore on saving the monarch butterfly
Both federal and state action are needed, and it will take more than milkweed planting
Eric posted an excellent analysis last month of the desirability of protecting the monarch butterfly under California’s Endangered Species Act (CESA). I wanted to add a brief coda (as well as a couple of pictures) to his post, to emphasize the need for federal as well as state action, and to expand on the steps …
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CONTINUE READINGCannabis Research Center
New UC Berkeley Research Center Focuses on Issues Around State Legalization of Cannabis
Over the past couple of years, California has moved into the brave new world of fully legalizing (as a matter of state law) recreational and medical cannabis. That transition was premised in part on promises that legalization would reduce the negative environmental impacts from illegal cannabis cultivation, and would facilitate the development of a sustainable …
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CONTINUE READINGGovernor Newsom Retreats On High Speed Rail
Revised Merced-Bakersfield vision in “State of the State” speech indicates reluctance to spend political capital
Governor Newsom’s “State of the State” speech today offered an abrupt scaling back of the state’s vision for its signature infrastructure project, high speed rail from Los Angeles to San Francisco: [L]et’s level about high speed rail. I have nothing but respect for Governor Brown’s and Governor Schwarzenegger’s ambitious vision. I share it. And there’s …
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CONTINUE READINGNew report on housing entitlement in LA
Report covers regulatory approvals for residential projects in four LA cities in 2014-16
I’ve blogged previously about work that a team here at UC Berkeley (Moira O’Neill, Giulia Gualco-Nelson, and myself) have been doing on studying land-use regulation, environmental law, and housing production in California, to get a better sense of how regulatory processes may be driving the housing crisis in the state, and eventually to produce specific …
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CONTINUE READINGCommemorating a Major Environmental Disaster–One With a Transformative Legacy
1969 Santa Barbara Oil Spill Sparked the Beginning of America’s Modern Environmental Era
This week marks the 50th anniversary of one of the most serious and consequential environmental disasters in American history–the Santa Barbara offshore oil spill of 1969. On January 28, 1969, an offshore oil rig (Platform A) owned and operated by the Union Oil Company and operating in federally-controlled waters in the Santa Barbara Channel off …
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