Climate Change
Who Killed the Ozone Rule?
It seems that Bill Daley did: Obama’s surprise move to block an ozone regulation from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) followed immense pressure from industry trade associations, which made numerous personal appeals to White House Chief of Staff Bill Daley. Daley met with the heads of several business groups more than two weeks before Obama …
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CONTINUE READINGLisa Jackson Speech
Following up on Holly’s post, here is video of the speech. (And no, contrary to a rumor in the blogosphere, she didn’t call conservative critics “jack-booted thugs.” Instead, as you’ll see, she commented that they used this term about EPA.) [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xcNeR6-EEGc]
CONTINUE READINGDefending the “green guinea pig”
Just a quick post to point out my UCLA colleague Matt Kahn’s piece, in the Christian Science Monitor, defending California’s AB 32 climate regulations from a recent Wall Street Journal editorial (sub. req’d.) that maligns the state’s approach. Apparently the WSJ relies on a long-debunked estimate of the costs to households from California’s program, an estimate that (among …
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CONTINUE READINGIs California’s Anti-Sprawl Law Worth the Investment?
This past Friday, the San Diego Association of Governments (SANDAG) approved the very first Sustainable Communities Strategy in the state as part of its regional transportation plan. The strategy document is the critical planning piece mandated by California’s anti-sprawl law, SB 375. As I discussed over the summer, SANDAG’s plan meets its greenhouse gas reduction …
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CONTINUE READINGNEWS FLASH: D.C. Circuit Appeal of GHG Rules
According to E&E News, the D.C. Circuit has set oral argument for Feb. 28 and Feb. 29 in the complex legal challenges to EPA’s endangerment finding and initial batch of rules regulating greenhouse gases. As I’ve written previously, I consider the endangerment-finding a slam dunk; the tougher issue is the “tailoring” rule that exempts smaller …
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CONTINUE READINGThe Case for Cap-and-Trade
Dan asked for a vote, and being a good Legal Planetary citizen, I responded — voting very reluctantly for cap-and-trade. The biggest difficulty, as is the case with most polls, lies in the phrasing of the question: “all things considered” what is “the best strategy” for controlling greenhouse gases. The problem with this locution — perhaps unavoidable …
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CONTINUE READINGWhat is the Best Approach to Controlling Carbon? You Be the Judge.
There’s a lot of disagreement about the best approach to controlling carbon. We thought it might be a good idea to find out what you, our readers, think about the issue. Here’s a quick poll: [polldaddy poll=5632574]
CONTINUE READINGMore On the Republican Anti-Fact Shield
So after I posted my tantrum about George Will the other day, I felt a little guilty. Maybe I had been too hard on The Tory Bowtie. After all, maybe his putting “facts” in scare quotes was just a slip. Then I saw this piece on the Washington Post editorial page by Republican pollster Ed Rogers, …
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CONTINUE READINGA Completely Uninteresting Story
The Wall Street Journal editorial board claims that California’s new cap-and-trade regulations will cost each consumer $3,800 a year and calls it creeping Stalinism. As my UCLA (and UCLAW!) colleague Matt Kahn gently and genially points out, the Journal’s editors are engaging in cranial-rectal fusion. In other news, dog bites man, the sun rises in …
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CONTINUE READINGTrolling for Anti-Environmental Plaintiffs
A reader sent me a an email from the Coalition of Energy Users trying to find plaintiffs for a challenge to AB 32 implementation. CEU claims to be a grassroots group that does not have a deep-pocket funding source, and that may be true. On the other hand, its interests are so precisely aligned with …
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