Climate Change
The Legal Barricades Protecting State Climate Policy
The general legal landscape favors state regulatory efforts.
The upshot is that it will be very challenging for the Feds to overturn state emissions regulations of power plants and other facilities. The statutory and doctrinal landscape are favorable for states playing defense, and the Supreme Court seems if anything more favorable to the states than the national government. Of course, these general observations leave plenty of room for litigation over the fine points, and the Feds could win some cases. But the states start the contest with an advantage.
CONTINUE READINGGuess What? The Next 2 Weeks Are “National Energy Dominance Month”
October 17-31 has now been proclaimed to be an entire month, courtesy of Trump.
“National Energy Dominance Month.” So typical of Trump: a bungled exercise in foolish bravado. The “bungled” part is that they forgot to designate October as a special month until it was halfway over. The “bravado” saturates almost every sentence, combined with the fact that the blustering has no practical effect. And the “foolish” part is about bad energy policy and bad economics. To expand supply, he needs higher prices, but that would hurt him politically. And there’s no reason to think foreigners would pay them.
CONTINUE READINGQuiet Climate Policy
Just because climate change isn’t salient for most voters doesn’t mean policy isn’t important
This Substack post from Matthew Yglesias on climate policy gets, I think two things right and one thing wrong. And getting those three components of climate policy correct is, I believe, important to long term, politically sustainable success in addressing climate change. First, as Yglesias correctly notes, climate change is not a priority for most …
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CONTINUE READINGLighting Candles in Dark Times: Environmental Law Centers in the Trump Era
These law school centers show it’s possible find ways to make a difference.
Environmental law have become vibrant parts of the law and policy ecosystem. At a time when despondency seems all too common, the work of these law school centers offers beacons of hope for the future of environmental protection. Some of that work is playing defense — pushing back against deregulatory efforts — while other work plays offense by identifying innovative directions for environmental policy. A comprehensive survey isn’t practical, but I’ll provide examples from several different centers.
CONTINUE READINGWhere Should EV Chargers Go?
California set an infrastructure milestone – but how can it reach ambitious goals for EV drivers?
As the California Energy Commission proudly announced this week, the state is now home to over 200,000 publicly accessible electric vehicle chargers. This milestone is worth celebrating, both in absolute and relative terms: California has far more individual public charging ports than gasoline nozzles, and with around 2 million EVs now on the road, around …
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CONTINUE READINGA Breakthrough From India?
For only the second time in half a century, India’s power generation emissions drop, demonstrating that the world is moving on from the United States
Good news is very hard to come by nowadays, so this recent analysis from the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air, a Finnish think tank, is particularly welcome: India’s carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from its power sector fell by 1% year-on-year in the first half of 2025 and by 0.2% over the past …
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CONTINUE READINGCalifornia and Brazil Advance Joint Climate Action
The new MOU announced at New York Climate Week increased engagement and joint climate leadership ahead of COP30.
This week, California Governor Gavin Newsom led a high-level meeting with Brazil’s Environment Secretary Marina Silva to expand the long-running partnerships that exist between the Golden State and the largest country of Latin America. The meeting resulted in a new Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between both governments to continue to collaborate on climate action. Although …
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CONTINUE READINGNew CARB Chair, New CARB Mandate
Lauren Sanchez has been named to the state’s most important climate job.
About 15 years ago, when presenting about California’s then-new climate change law AB32, I used to show a slide with six words on it — “Why Mary Nichols Rules the World”— along with a huge photo of Mary. The slide let me talk about the enormous authority and discretion bestowed by AB32 on one agency, …
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CONTINUE READINGNational Academies School the Trump Administration on Gold-standard Science
Report on Effects of Human-Caused GHG Emissions on US Climate, Health, and Welfare shows how actual science is done.
It’s not news that the Trump administration has little interest in getting the facts right. But facts often matter for crafting policy that serves our societal goals. And it’s not rare for the law to require that specific factual findings underpin government decisions. In both cases, we need to assemble, understand, and apply the best …
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CONTINUE READINGDOJ Challenge to Vermont’s Climate Law Has a Problem
The EPA’s proposed repeal of the endangerment finding undermines the U.S. position in the Vermont Climate Superfund Case.
EPA’s proposal to rescind the Clean Air Act endangerment finding is not final but it is already causing problems for the Trump Administration in court. The Department of Justice today filed a brief for summary judgment challenging Vermont’s climate superfund law. Its principal argument? That the Clean Air Act — in regulating greenhouse gases — …
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