Culture & Ethics Archives - Page 18 of 54

Culture & Ethics

Saving Public Transit: Finding the Money

We all know that public dollars are scarce, especially for public transit. As the federal government scales back its investments in the nation’s buses and trains, local governments are stepping up. Los Angeles in particular has innovated a way to leverage their existing sales tax revenue for transit to start building more projects sooner. Gloria …

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Really, David Brooks?

I sat down at my computer this morning intending to blast away at an academic article I’m writing but only after peeking at the NY Times. I thought a little newspaper reading would be the end of my procrastination until I read David Brooks, something I don’t always do but couldn’t resist when I saw …

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PACE Court Ruling Now Final: So What’s the Future of PACE?

Federal Judge Claudia Wilken, who has been presiding over the West Coast lawsuit to overturn federal housing policy and restore residential PACE energy financing programs, made her August ruling final today. As you may recall, Judge Wilken ruled in August that the Federal Housing Finance Authority (FHFA) would have to pursue a notice-and-comment rulemaking on …

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Saving Bambi’s forest

Here on Legal Planet we talk a lot about government-mediated solutions to environmental problems, with good reason (and not, I like to think, simply as the enviro-lawyer corollary to the maxim that those wielding hammers tend to treat problems like nails). But every now and then it’s nice to read about the power of direct, unmediated …

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Fracking, Methane, and Moving Toward Better Data Through Collaboration

Is using natural gas produced through fracking better for the environment than using coal? The answer is an unqualified maybe . That’s because we don’t have good enough data to know definitively. But a new collaboration between academics, the fracking industry and environmentalists aims to fill the data gap. First, some background. The boom in …

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Conference on Saving Public Transit, Friday November 2nd at UCLA Law (Simulcast Available)

Please join us on Friday, November 2nd, for a free (with registration) conference on strategies to save public transit during a time of shrinking budgets. The conference will feature experts on transit finance, real estate development around transit, and new technologies that may revolutionize transit in the coming years. Art Leahy, Chief Executive Officer of …

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Barry Commoner’s Instructive Errors

The reflections published since the death of Barry Commoner a few days ago – including here by Dan Farber, and in many other places – have appropriately celebrated Commoner’s huge contributions to environmental science, and to raising public and political awareness of the gravity of environmental risks and the need to reduce them. But these …

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Just Overheard

A non-renewable natural resource walks into a bar. The bartender growls at it. “Sorry — nothing for you! You’ve been getting wasted all day!” Thank you, thank you; I’ll be here all week.

Barry Commoner and Our Interconnected World

Barry Commoner was born in Brooklyn in 1917 and died there yesterday, having helped conceptualize environmentalism in the meantime. You can learn more about his life from the NY Times obituary. Commoner is probably best known today for his four environmental “laws”: Everything is connected to everything else. Everything must go somewhere. Nature knows best. …

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Roger Cohen Has a Lazy Day

I suppose that it’s tough writing two 750-word columns each week; that’s why the NYT’s Roger Cohen decided to rehash his hatchet job on organic foods in today’s paper. In a previous column, Cohen ridiculed fans of organic food, pointing to a Stanford study finding that organic foods were no healthier for human beings than …

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‘Schedule F’ Would Be Bad—Even for Trump

My time in the Biden administration shows that Project 2025’s proposal to purge civil servants would be bad policy for everyone.

Why You Should Read CA’s ExxonMobil Plastic Lawsuit

California’s lawsuit against ExxonMobil for lying about plastic recycling is the latest example of the state using old-fashioned legal tools to address more modern harms.

The Dirty Truth Behind a Feel-Good Energy Story

The San Francisco 49ers just became the first NFL team to buy sustainable aviation fuel. But that move is overshadowed by Big Oil sponsorships in sports.

Community Solar: Compensation

Who gets the money? Compensation mechanisms are where a lot of the power of these programs resides, but naturally, also the debate.

Understanding China’s National Energy Security Strategy

How should the US compete with Chinese green development?

New Law Reaffirms Local Authority to Ban Oil Drilling

AB 3233, part of a trio of bills that the governor just signed, paves a clear path for local phase-out efforts.

Governor Newsom Should Veto These Four Bills

Four seemingly modest bills — AB 1122, AB 1296, AB 637 and AB 3179 — are sneaky legislative efforts to threaten California’s world-leading clean transportation investments.

Climate Policy After the 2024 Election

In this UCLA Emmett Institute webinar, panelists discussed the climate implications of the 2024 election from the state, national, and international perspective.

The Walz-Vance Debate and Environmental Policy

After Hurricane Helene, Vance and Walz were pressed on climate change during the VP debate. Here’s everything they said on energy and the environment.

A Good Day to Drop Big Oil

Major league sports teams like to talk about sustainability measures on Green Sports Day, which is Oct. 6. They should do something about their fossil fuel sponsors.

Culture & Ethics

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Climate policy is changing rapidly. Stay in the loop with expert analysis via email Monday - Friday.

TRENDING

The U.S. Supreme Court denied an emergency stay in West Virginia v. EPA, a challenge to EPA’s rule. Our UCLA Law clinic submitted a brief on behalf of grid experts in the case at the D.C. Circuit.

People complain about faceless bureaucrats. At least in part, that could be fixed.

Marjorie Taylor Greene is wildly wrong about government scientists controlling hurricanes. There is a rich history of weather modification experiments that make that false claim more dangerous.

The polls could be systematically off, not just due to random error. That’s a worry with climate models as well.

Ballot measures in Washington and California are especially important but others are worth noting.

The Katoomba Group is celebrating 25 years of pioneering new approaches to realizing value in nature. Here’s what we’ve learned.

If the California car waiver survives a possible Trump presidency, we may have the overruling of Chevron to thank.

We’re witnessing the collision of extreme weather, climate science, national news and politics. The question of “Who pays for climate disasters?” is about to become even more important.

These two states are often portrayed as epitomizing two possible futures. But the differences are more nuanced than you think.

Multiplying proposals for ice restoration face geopolitical obstacles