Environmental Justice
Why There is (Still) a Carrot Boycott in Cuyama Valley
Bolthouse Farms and Grimmway Farms are technically no longer plaintiffs in the lawsuit they launched. But their water war wages on.
Don’t expect to see carrots on Thanksgiving menus in the Cuyama Valley, where residents and small farmers have been boycotting Bolthouse Farms and Grimmway Farms over their outsized water use. They’re still not welcome at the table. Back in September, I wrote about the carrot boycott and the hardball tactics by those big growers that …
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CONTINUE READINGHow to Get to Zero Emissions at the Ports
A new report by UCLA and UC Berkeley examines policy solutions to accelerate deployment of zero-emission cargo handling equipment at the Ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles.
The Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach are well on their way toward electrification, but the road to zero emissions is a long one. This new report—A Heavy Lift: Policy Solutions to Accelerate Deployment of Zero-Emission Cargo Handling Equipment at the Ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles and Beyond—surveys the biggest obstacles to …
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CONTINUE READINGLivestock Operations Are Responsible for Over Half of California’s Methane Emissions—Why Won’t CARB Regulate Them?
CARB will have the authority to regulate methane from livestock operations beginning in January but has not initiated rulemaking
At a recent California Air Resources Board (CARB) meeting, a staff member responded to a question about why CARB’s program for reducing emissions from transportation fuels incentivized the capture of methane from landfills so much less than the capture of methane from dairies: “Landfills have a different CI [carbon intensity] score because they are …
CONTINUE READINGWhat’s New About Income-Graduated Fixed Charges?
California is in the process of making income-graduated fixed rates a part of ratepayers’ electric bills. This is the second post in a series that follows that proceeding.
California’s new income-graduated fixed charge (IGFC) policy makes two major moves. The IGFC 1) unbundles costs from volumetric rates and shifts a portion of those costs into a separate fixed charge and 2) imposes the fixed charge on the basis of income. The IGFC has been described as unprecedented—but just what is new about this …
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CONTINUE READINGCalifornia Enacts Major Water Law Reform Legislation–But More Changes Are Needed
New law explicitly authorizes State Water Board to require water users to verify their water rights
The California Legislature has enacted and Governor Gavin Newsom recently signed into law SB 389, an important water law reform measure authored by State Senator Ben Allen. California has one of the most antiquated and outdated water rights systems of any Western state. To put it bluntly, California currently faces a 21st century water supply …
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CONTINUE READINGThe Climate Crisis, the Tribes, and the IRA
Biden’s signature climate law spotlighted the need to support tribal responses to climate change.
Five hundred and thirty-one years ago today, Christopher Columbus went ashore at Guanahaní, an island in the Bahamas. That date marked the beginning of an era of European settlement and colonialism, accompanied by widespread destruction of existing American societies. Today, Native Americans communities face another crisis: climate change. Many tribes are at high risk from …
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CONTINUE READINGA Summer Job, Record Heat, Climate Hope
Guest contributor Mollie Cueva-Dabkoski reflects on working as a summer law intern at Our Children’s Trust on the Held v. Montana case.
It’s been three months now since 16 young plaintiffs suing the state of Montana for climate harms piled into a Helena courtroom so small that the attorneys worried whether everyone would fit. (They did.) And it’s been one month since the Montana First District Court determined that the state of Montana had indeed violated Montana …
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CONTINUE READINGIncome-Based Electric Bills: Fact and Fiction
California is in the process of making income-graduated fixed rates a part of ratepayers’ electric bills. This is the first post in a series that follows that proceeding.
Under new legislation, California is moving to a novel system that includes income-based fixed charges for electricity. Some critics contend that this is a giveaway to incumbent utilities. It’s not. Others have implied that the charges reflect new costs to ratepayers on top of existing rates. This is also not accurate. There are, however, important …
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CONTINUE READINGSpewing Out Mercury
These three power plants cause a big share of America’s mercury pollution.
In Ireland, poor people used to burn peat from fuel. Barely a step ahead of that, some American power plants burn semi-fossilized peat (lignite) to run their generators. It turns out that those power plants produce about a third of all the toxic mercury emissions of the entire industry. Even more remarkably, about half of …
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CONTINUE READINGIs the Inflation Reduction Act Working?
Enacted a year ago, the climate law is boosting EVs and clean-energy manufacturing. But there’s urgent work to be done on transmission siting and connecting communities with IRA funding.
Happy birthday to the Inflation Reduction Act. It’s been nearly a year since Democratic lawmakers and the White House celebrated the passage of the biggest climate spending legislation in American history. But in many ways passage was the easy part. Exactly how the IRA continues to be implemented at the local, state, and federal level …
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