Culture & Ethics
Bombs Bursting in Air: Environmental Regulation of Fireworks
It seems only fitting as we approach the Fourth of July holiday to turn our attention to the environmental impacts and regulation of fireworks. As it turns out, our age-old patriotic tradition of exploding packages of toxic chemicals in the air is not without its environmental drawbacks. Although much is still unknown about the environmental …
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CONTINUE READINGEnvironmental Haiku for Summer
Just for amusement: Environmental haiku On a summer day. ____________ Across the hilltops, Slowly wheeling their white blades, Stand lines of windmills. ____________ A nap in the shade, Dreaming that new studies make Fox News fall silent. ____________ “Global climate change” – A long and abstract title For a world in pain. ____________ A beautiful …
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CONTINUE READINGU.C. Davis Professor Dan Sperling Awarded Blue Planet Prize
Kudos to my U.C. Davis faculty colleague, Dan Sperling, this year’s recipient of the prestigious Blue Planet Prize. The Prize, awarded by the Asahi Glass Foundation, is often referred to as the Nobel Prize for environmental science. Dan Sperling is one of the most influential transportation scholars and policymakers in America. A professor of engineering …
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CONTINUE READINGFlashing Back to the Day When Rush Limbaugh Discussed my Environmental Research
The Legal Planet blog tends to focus on serious subjects. I salute this but I always try to cross the line. A few years ago, Matt Kotchen and I wrote a good paper documenting that the deep recession had chilled interest in combating climate change. Our empirical study used Google search trends by state/year/month. We …
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CONTINUE READINGQuality of Life Dynamics in Rural Renewable Power Communities
A journal called Energy Policy will soon publish my paper titled; Local Non-Market Quality of Life Dynamics in New Wind Farm Communities. We know that renewable power generation (both solar panels and wind turbines) requires land. It wouldn’t be efficient to transform Beverly Hills into wind farms even if it was a windy place. Thus, …
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CONTINUE READINGMalibu Beach Access and the 99%
Is public property public property? Malibu has some wonderful beaches and these are supposed to be public property. Nearby home owners have effectively privatized these beaches by making it difficult for beach visitors to park and to know where the public paths to the beach are actually located. Facing this asymmetric information problem, an …
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CONTINUE READINGWhich City Has the Best Parks? Trust for Public Lands Releases Annual ParkScore Ranking.
The Trust for Public Land (TPL) recently released its annual ParkScore index, which ranks the park systems of the fifty largest U.S. cities. As with all scorecards, the methodology is imperfect and the metrics are somewhat crude; but seeing how U.S. cities compare across uniform parameters is a good starting point for a larger conversation …
CONTINUE READINGThe Emergence of Food Law
As with most holidays, Memorial Day is associated with a traditional food component — in this case, picnics. So this seems like a good occasion to talk about the emerging legal field of food law. According to the Food and Drug Law Institute, about sixty law schools have courses on Food and Drug Law, a …
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CONTINUE READINGWaiter, What’s This Fly Doing In My Soup?
This is the sort of thing that gives environmentalism a bad name: The UN has new weapons to fight hunger, boost nutrition and reduce pollution, and they might be crawling or flying near you right now: edible insects. The Food and Agriculture Organization on Monday hailed the likes of grasshoppers, ants and other members of …
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CONTINUE READINGEnvironmental Justice, Metrics & California’s San Joaquin Valley
This week the California Environmental Protection Agency issued a disturbing but worthwhile report on environmental justice issues in California. That report confirms what many environmental justice advocates and state residents already assumed: that the San Joaquin Valley is–far and away–the most environmentally-challenged region of the state. According to the CalEPA press release accompanying the report, …
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