Climate Change

A Path Forward for Vehicle Electrification?

It’s been a rough few months for vehicle electrification efforts in the United States. While Congress swaps proposals to eliminate federal electric vehicle purchase, manufacturing, and charging incentives in order to “pay for” massive tax cuts for the wealthy, President Trump last week signed a Congressional Review Act resolution that claims to eliminate California’s nation-leading …

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Last Year’s Climate Bond May Not Be What You Thought

While investing in important adaptation and resilience measures, Proposition 4 does less to create new clean energy infrastructure investments

Last year, legislators passed, the governor signed, and California voters approved, a ten billion dollar climate bond (the Safe Drinking Water, Wildfire Prevention, Drought Preparedness, and Clean Air Bond Act of 2024, SB 867 (Allen), which appeared on the November ballot as Proposition 4). While the bond act’s full title largely tells the story of …

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Can Trump Save U.S. Coal? Not likely.

“Beautiful clean coal”, as Trump calls it, is inexorably declining.

The title of one of Trump’s executive orders is “Reinvigorating America’s Beautiful Clean Coal Industry.” That order says, “it is the policy of the United States that coal is essential to our national and economic security.”  But Trump’s efforts seem unlikely to make a dent in the long-term, global malaise of the coal industry, or its sharp decline in the U.S.

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Supply-Side Regulations & Clean Vehicles

As Congress votes to undermine California’s sovereignty to set supply-side standards on polluting vehicles, CLEE’s research shows why these policies are so effective

In May 2025, both the U.S. House and Senate passed resolutions to revoke California’s Clean Air Act waivers, which allow the state to enforce stricter vehicle emissions rules than federal standards (see Ann Carlson’s post on this issue). If signed by the President—and if successful in the face of court challenges to their dubious legality—these …

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Gas Price Politics and Desperate Moderates

The Drain

The Drain is a weekly roundup of environmental and climate news from Legal Planet.

In 18 years of working in newsrooms around Los Angeles, I talked with lots of political campaigns — but a phone call from Antonio Villaraigosa in spring of 2018 stands out. I was at my desk in the cramped newsroom of KCRW, sitting in between All Things Considered host Steve Chiotakis and producer Ben Gottlieb, …

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Executive Disorders

One after another, Trump has let loose destructive blasts at the environment to promote fossil fuels, mining, and logging.

We all know that Trump has issued a slew of executive orders since taking the oath of office. We also know that many of these are aimed to promoting fossil fuels, mining, and logging at the expense of the environment, while disfavoring renewable energy.  Still, it’s impressive when you put the list together to see the full onslaught. 

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Governors Lead the Fight on Forests and Climate

To see how governors are leading the fight against deforestation, look no further than a meeting happening this week in Brazil.

When the annual U.N. climate conference descends on the small Brazilian rainforest city of Belém in November 2025, it will be tempting to focus on the drama and disunity among major nations. Only 21 countries had even submitted their updated plans for managing climate change by the 2025 deadline required under the Paris Agreement. The U.S. is pulling out of …

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Is Brazil Ready for COP30? No One Is Ready for COP30

The Drain

The Drain is a weekly roundup of climate and environmental news from Legal Planet.

It’s officially less than 6 months until COP30 — when tens of thousands of people will descend on the Brazilian city of Belém for the annual UN climate conference — and no one is ready. For one thing, Belém is an impoverished city of 2.5 million that can’t build enough hotels for the 50,000 expected delegates …

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DOJ vs. C&T

What Trump’s new lawsuits against two states may mean for California’s cap-and-trade program.

As my UCLA Law colleague Ann Carlson described last week, Trump’s DOJ has filed two pretty extraordinary lawsuits against the states of Michigan and Hawaii trying to block those states — preemptively — from bringing suit against fossil fuel companies for climate harms.  As Ann points out, these DOJ suits are among the first salvos …

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Brazil Steps Ahead of the U.S. on Climate Policy

Brazil flag

A new emissions trading system is a major step for Brazilian climate policy.

Hopefully, Brazil’s actions will encourage other countries, particularly in South America, to take similar actions.  The EU and California have been leaders in this arena, but carbon trading systems are now beginning to get traction outside of the developed world in China and now Brazil.  That’s an encouraging sign.

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