Environmental Justice

When Cooking Can Kill

Cookstoves are a major threat to health in developing countries, while also wreaking environmental damage.

Cooking dinner, as it turns out, is one of the most serious public health and environmental problems in the world. There’s a common misperception that environmental concerns are just a First World luxury.  But the cookstove example shows that the global poor, too, are in need of better, more efficient, less polluting energy sources. Here …

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What are California Legislators Thinking About Cap-and-Trade?

CA Senate Hearing at UCLA Focuses on Ways to Spend Auction Revenue

Today, UCLA’s Emmett Center and IOES hosted a hearing of the Senate Select Committee on Climate Change and AB 32 Implementation with Senators Pavley, Correa, de Leon, deSaulnier, Lieu, and Assemblymember Bloom attending.  The hearing featured testimony on climate science, on AB 32 implementation, and on opportunities to invest revenue from the state’s cap-and-trade auctions in ways that …

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In Praise of the 9-0 Supreme Court Loss: LA Port’s Clean Trucks Program lives on

If you’re an environmental group and you find yourself in front of today’s Supreme Court, in some sense you’ve already lost. Nothwithstanding the 2007 Mass v EPA victory for climate change regulation, the Supremes tend not to look kindly, lately, on environmental interests. (Richard Lazarus has argued that the record of NEPA losses at the …

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The State Senate’s proposal for CEQA reform

The State Senate recently passed its version of CEQA reform.  Having looked over the bill, it’s much better than I feared.  What seems to be the most important change is a move towards adopting standard setting in CEQA – i.e., making generalized determinations about what levels of certain kinds of impacts are “significant” such that …

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Court Casts Doubt on Constitutionality of Michigan’s Renewable Portfolio Standard, Upholds Cost Sharing for Transmission Lines

In an important victory for the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) — and in my view for renewable energy more generally — the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit has upheld a FERC order that helps finance transmission lines to carry renewable energy from rural areas to urban centers in the midwest and …

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Which 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 …

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Some Overdue Environmental Justice In Time for Shavuot

The Jewish festival of Shavuot, which begins at sundown this evening, commemorates the Israelites’ receiving of the Torah at Mt. Sinai.   Shavuot is thus the paradigmatic lawyers’ holiday given its focus on law and justice.  This connects nicely with the other two great pilgrimage holidays found in the Jewish Bible, giving us a trinity (so …

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Environmental 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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Industry Coalition Petitions for Supreme Court Review of D.C. Circuit Decision on Greenhouse Gas Rules

Yesterday, American Chemistry Council and a coalition of other industry groups filed a petition for U.S. Supreme Court review of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals’ June, 26 2012 decision upholding the Environmental Protection Agency’s greenhouse gas rules.  As Dan previously discussed here, the D.C. Circuit denied rehearing of its decision in December.  The American …

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Guest Blogger Miriam Seifter: The Environmental Dimension of American Trucking

On Tuesday, the Supreme Court heard argument in American Trucking Associations, Inc. v. City of Los Angeles, a case addressing the preemptive scope of the Federal Aviation Administration Authorization Act (FAAAA).  Over at Scotusblog, I’ve discussed the two relatively technical questions presented in the case.  The first asks whether two provisions in the Port of …

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