General
The Trump Administration’s Arbitrary Review of National Monuments
Zinke’s review has been anything but transparent
Last Thursday, Secretary Zinke submitted a report to President Trump, recommending changes to national monuments. Although Trump’s Executive Order in April called for a “final report” within 120 days–the deadline was Thursday–the Interior Department’s press release called the report a “draft.” And as Holly Doremus explained on this blog, it has still not been made …
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CONTINUE READINGHouston’s Shockingly Poor Flood Control System
Houston failed to learn a key lesson from Katrina about the need to prepare for catastrophic flooding.
The torrential rain in Houston would have caused bad flooding no matter what. There’s no question about that. But it’s also true that Houston’s flood control efforts have been badly managed. Houston failed to learn a key lesson from Katrina: the most important disaster response is done years in advance through risk mitigation. Not only …
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CONTINUE READINGContinuing Efforts to Put a Price on Carbon
New York regulators and transmission operators consider a carbon adder for wholesale electricity.
The New York Independent System Operator (NYISO) operates the state’s electric grid and conducts wholesale power markets. The New York Department of Public Service regulates the state’s investor-owned electricity providers. Together, they have issued a report concluding that the state, ratepayers, and the environment would benefit from placing a charge on wholesale electric power to …
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CONTINUE READINGCenter for Ocean Solutions Releases Consensus Statement and Report on the Public Trust Doctrine, Sea Level Rise, and Coastal Land Use in California
Report Analyzes State Public Trust Responsibilities on the Coastline, Coincides With Coastal Commission Staff’s Release of Draft Residential Adaptation Policy Guidance
UPDATE (September 1, 2017): The statement’s drafters have provided a link (shared at the end of the post) for California attorneys who wish to sign on to the statement discussed here. Last month, a group of public trust and coastal land use experts, working under the auspices of the Center for Ocean Solutions, released two …
CONTINUE READING200 Days and Counting: Budget
What are the implications of changes to the federal budget for environmental law?
The Trump Administration has proposed draconian cuts to a range of environmental and science agencies, including the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Interior, NASA’s climate science work, and NOAA’s science and regulatory programs. Here we’ll talk about the potential implications of dramatic budget cuts, and then the likelihood they will occur, at least for …
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CONTINUE READINGSetback for EPA in Regulating Gases with High Global Warming Potential
DC Circuit vacates 2015 rule on HFCs
Today, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals vacated a 2015 EPA rule targeting the use of hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), a class of potent greenhouse gases that are used as refrigerants and propellants for a variety of purposes as a substitute for ozone-depleting chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HCFCs). The court’s decision is a setback for President Obama’s …
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CONTINUE READING200 Days and Counting: Legislation
What are the prospects for major environmental legislation in the near future?
From the perspective of environmental law, one of the most important questions is whether full Republican control of Congress and the White House would lead to fundamental changes to significant environmental laws. These are the kinds of changes that would be most important over the long-run, from a legal perspective. Laws are hard to pass …
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CONTINUE READING200 Days and Counting: Intro
The start of a series on the future of environmental law after 200 days of the Trump Administration
As of August 6, President Trump has been in office for 200 days. When he was elected and inaugurated, there was a great deal of concern about what his Presidency might mean for environmental law. We’ve now gone about 1/8 through his first-term, so we have a little better sense of what the future might …
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CONTINUE READINGNational Monuments: a Rebuttal to Commentators who Support Trump’s Actions to Undo Public Lands Protections
This post is co-authored with Sean Hecht. For the past three months, Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke has been reviewing some of the national monuments designated under the Antiquities Act by Presidents Obama, Bush, and Clinton. Since the end of last year, we and others at Legal Planet have been writing on the scope …
CONTINUE READINGCalifornia Supreme Court Issues Split Decision in CEQA Preemption Case
Justices Find CEQA’s Application to Public Railroad Projects Not Fully Preempted
The California Supreme Court has ruled in an important case that the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) is not fully preempted when it comes to publicly-owned railroad projects in the Golden State. Friends of the Eel River v. North Coast Railroad Authority. In that decision, the justices forged a middle ground between the more extreme …
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