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Major Legislation Reintroduced To Limit Local Restrictions On Housing Near Transit
State Sen. Scott Wiener takes another stab at solving California’s severe housing shortage
Last year, State Senator Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) went right to the heart of California’s massive housing shortage in its job-rich centers with SB 827, which would have limited local restrictions on housing near transit. The bill went down in committee, a victim of election year politics and diverse opposition from wealthy homeowners, tenants rights …
CONTINUE READINGSupreme Court Issues Narrow Decision in Dusky Gopher Frog Case, Leaving Key Questions About the Scope of Critical Habitat Unresolved for Now
Fifth Circuit Must Now Review Whether Designated Critical Habitat is “Habitat,” & Whether Agency’s Assessment of Costs and Benefits of Critical Habitat Designation Was Arbitrary
The U.S. Supreme Court filed its opinion in Weyerhaeuser v. U.S. Fish and WIldlife Service today. I’ve posted about this case previously here (when our clinic filed its brief on behalf of preeminent scientists) and here (on the day of the oral argument in the case). (Note that this blog post, like all my posts on this …
CONTINUE READINGDon’t Believe Everything That You Read
Solar geoengineering is often inaccurately portrayed in the media
If you had followed the climate change news over the weekend, you might have been shocked to see headlines such as “Scientists Prescribe a Healthy Dose of Sulphate Particles to Promote Global Cooling on the Cheap.” CNN tweeted that “Harvard and Yale scientists are proposing that we tackle climate change by dimming the sun.” And …
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CONTINUE READINGDoes the New National Climate Assessment Hurt the Trump Administration in Court?
The Report Could Affect a Number of Cases
The newly released Fourth National Climate Assessment is a bombshell. It catalogues, in excruciating detail, the dire health, economic, and environmental consequences of unchecked climate change on every region of the United States. And although the Trump Administration appears to have tried to minimize the report’s political and public impact by dropping it on Black …
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CONTINUE READINGNetherlands Government Appeals Historic Climate Change Ruling
The Dutch Supreme Court will decide whether the government is obligated to cut emissions more
Last month, an appeals court in the the Netherlands upheld a lower court’s ruling that the Dutch government is legally obligated to reduce greenhouse gas emissions more aggressively. This drew much international attention, as well as praise from environmental advocacy organizations. As expected, the government has announced that it will appeal this decision in the Urgenda …
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CONTINUE READINGGuest Bloggers Deborah Gordon and Frances Reuland: Is California Extraordinary? Its Oil Resources Certainly Are
Facts About California’s Oil and Greenhouse Gas Emissions
Despite ongoing federal rollbacks to environmental regulations, California has the right to set its own clean air standards because it is truly extraordinary. Truth be told, the compelling circumstances that first set in motion California’s vehicle emissions standards remain entirely valid. And there are four recent conditions, related to California’s oil supply, production, and refining, …
CONTINUE READINGSessions Out, Whitaker In: What Might the DOJ Shakeup Mean for Environmental Enforcement?
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
News broke this afternoon that Trump has forced Attorney General Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III to resign — naming Sessions’ chief of staff, the Marbury v. Madison critic and sports take tweeter Matthew Whitaker acting AG. This move obviously has some pretty horrifying implications for the country at large, but it’s worth thinking about how the …
CONTINUE READINGSolar Geoengineering and International Law
May states intentionally alter the entire planet’s climate?
A couple weeks ago, I introduced solar geoengineering (see also 1, 2, 4 in the series). This is a set of proposed technologies that would reduce climate change by blocking or reflecting a small portion of incoming sunlight. It appears that it would be effective in reducing climate change, inexpensive, rapid, and technically feasible. It would …
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CONTINUE READINGSAFE From Kavanaugh?
Would the newest Justice uphold the Trump administration’s fuel economy standards rollback?
A little over a week ago, my colleagues and I submitted comments to EPA and NHTSA urging the withdrawal of the Trump administration’s so-called “SAFE” rule, which would roll back the federal fuel economy standards for model year 2021-2026 passenger cars and light trucks and revoke California’s waiver for its Advanced Clean Cars program. The …
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CONTINUE READINGMajor Policy Attacks on California’s Low Carbon Fuel Standard and Why They’re Off-Target
Second in a Series About California’s Low Carbon Fuel Standard Program
[Post co-authored by Ted Parson and Sean Hecht] In this post, we continue our discussion of California’s Low-Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS), which we introduced in our post on October 4, 2018. Because it’s a prominent and ambitious policy that will reduce California’s reliance on petroleum-based transport fuels, it is unsurprising the Low-Carbon Fuel Standard has …
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