Climate Change
A Big Step for the Montreal Protocol
Parties to the Montreal Protocol will hold their 25th meeting next week in Bangkok. In addition to all their normal business related to the continuing phasedown of ozone-depleting substances (ODS), parties at this meeting will consider a huge step, in the form of proposals to amend the Protocol to phase down Hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs). Proponents of …
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CONTINUE READINGCEQA Reform 2013 Holds Promise for Improving the Environment
Despite grumblings, the new law contains significant victories for infill development and urban investment
Governor Brown recently signed into law this year’s version of “CEQA reform,” which as Eric noted was decidedly stripped down from what it could have been. SB 743 (Steinberg) got a lot of negative attention for giving the Sacramento Kings basketball arena proponents accelerated environmental review and immunity from injunctive relief unless the project is …
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CONTINUE READINGMore Musings on the Cert Petition Grant in the Greenhouse Gas Emissions Case
Does Regulating Greenhouse Gases Lead to Absurd Results and What Happens Once the Court Rules?
In follow up to my early morning post of this morning, here are a couple of additional points. 1) A related but different argument petitioners are making about why the PSD provisions don’t apply to the regulation of greenhouse gases is that the application of the provisions would lead to absurd results. The absurd results …
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CONTINUE READINGSupreme Court Grants Cert on One Aspect of Greenhouse Gas Emissions Suit
Court lets stand endangerment finding, rules regulating emissions from automobile tailpipes
This morning, the Supreme Court announced that it has granted six of the nine petitions challenging the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling upholding the Environmental Protection Agency’s rules regulating greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act. The Court granted cert on only a single question (petitioners had raised a number of them): Whether EPA …
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CONTINUE READINGStill Waiting For Supreme Court Decision on Greenhouse Gas Emissions Cert Petition
We May Learn This Week Whether Court Takes Up Important Climate Change Case
Court watchers are still waiting to learn whether the U.S. Supreme Court will hear the second most important federal case involving greenhouse gas emissions, Coalition for Responsible Regulation v. EPA. The Court is closed today for a federal holiday (not because of the shutdown) but any day we should hear about whether it will take …
CONTINUE READINGClimate Denial and the First Amendment
The First Amendment protects even the right to support demonstrably false positions like climate denial.
The editors of the L.A. Times won’t publish letters by climate deniers, on the ground that they don’t want to take up valuable space with false information. Which raises the question: what does the First Amendment have to say about climate denial? Nothing in constitutional law is 100% clear, but here’s a stab at the …
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CONTINUE READINGDenial As a Way of Life
Climate denial is closely related to debt-ceiling denial.
As it turns out, many of the same people who deny that climate change is a problem also deny that government default would be a problem. No doubt there are several reasons: the fact that Barack Obama is on the opposite side of both issues; the general impermeability of ideologues to facts or expert opinion; …
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CONTINUE READINGCalifornia Enacts Nation’s First Comprehensive Fracking Law—And Everyone’s Unhappy
Controversial But Promising, SB 4 Constitutes Tangible Progress on the Fracking Front
Late last month the California Legislature passed, and Governor Jerry Brown signed into law, the nation’s first comprehensive system of regulating hydraulic fracturing, the oil and gas drilling technique more commonly known as “fracking.” It turns out that no one–the oil and gas industry, surface landowners or environmentalists–is particularly happy with the new law. And …
CONTINUE READINGEnvironmental Review of Free Trade Agreements
Why aren’t we talking about climate change?
Last week, the period for public comment on an interim environmental review of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade agreement closed, marking perhaps the last significant opportunity for public input on the environmental impacts of the proposed agreement. The review was conducted to identify potential environmental effects of the TPP, as required by an Executive Order …
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CONTINUE READINGCarbon Budgeting
The IPCC highlights the importance of the carbon budget, the total amount of CO2 emitted during this century.
The first volume of the latest IPCC report is now public. It’s a very lengthy document, and since it’s written by physical scientists rather than journalists, it’s not an easy read. One important concept that seems to be a lot more important in this version of the IPCC is the carbon budget. The key …
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