General
CRA Update: What’s Been Overturned, What’s Still Standing?
Congress and Trump have done some major harm with this tool, but so far, not as much as feared.
We’re getting close to the deadline for Congress final chance to use its override authority under the Congressional Review Act to eliminate Obama Administrations regulations. The deadline for introducing new resolutions has already passed, and the deadline for voting ends around May 10. It’s not clear whether the Senate in particular will have time for …
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CONTINUE READINGAnd Here’s to You, Justice Werdegar
Retiring California Supreme Court Jurist Leaves Impressive Environmental Law Legacy
The California Supreme Court recently announced that Justice Kathryn Werdegar will retire this August, after serving for 23 years on California’s highest Court. Justice Werdegar is the longest-serving member of the currently-constituted Supreme Court. Over her 23-year career on the Supreme Court, Justice Werdegar has authored at least 25 major opinions on a wide variety …
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CONTINUE READINGA Lame Soundbite From a Flailing Administration
Pruitt’s statement yesterday exemplifies why the Trump Administration is in trouble.
Everything that’s wrong with the Trump Administration was on display yesterday, thanks to Scott Pruitt. He told “Fox and Friends” that the U.S. should get out of the Paris Agreement because China and India have no obligations until 2030. The fact that he made this comment, and made it on Fox, vividly exemplifies many of the Administration’s …
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CONTINUE READINGGuest Blogger Ben Levitan: The Tenth Anniversary of Massachusetts v. EPA
The opinion stands for EPA’s responsibility to address climate change based on law and science, and to safeguard public health and the environment under adverse political conditions
If it feels like we’re being inundated with bad news about federal climate policy, here’s a cause for hope: this month marks the tenth anniversary of the Supreme Court’s decision in Massachusetts v. EPA, one of the most important environmental cases in our nation’s history. The Supreme Court’s landmark decision in Massachusetts came when the …
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CONTINUE READINGThe Overlooked Part of Trump’s Executive Order on Climate Change
It Revoked a Market-Based Approach to Natural Resource Management
President Trump’s March 28th Executive Order on Promoting Energy Independence and Economic Growth has understandably received a great deal of attention from the environmental community. Commentators, including those on Legal Planet, have examined the order’s efforts to roll back the climate change initiatives of the Obama administration. Another aspect of the order, though, has been …
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CONTINUE READINGCourt of Appeal Confirms California Cap-and-Trade is Not a Tax
It’s voluntary and it provides valuable commodities to purchasers
With the feds backsliding (or worse) on climate regulation, the efforts of California and other states to tackle climate change are especially prominent and critical. So it’s a welcome time for today’s good news for California climate regulators: The state court of appeal has rejected industry’s challenge to California’s cap-and-trade program. That program is one …
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CONTINUE READINGTrump’s Executive Order: Bad Policy and More Uncertainty
President Trump’s Executive Order on climate policy is an invitation to bad policymaking and legal uncertainty. The big-ticket item targeted by the Order, of course, is the Obama Administration’s Clean Power Plan and related rules on carbon dioxide emissions from power plants. The EO has limited immediate legal impact: none of the major rules can …
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CONTINUE READINGSome Resources for Non-Experts (and for Experts Too!) on the Executive Order Rolling Back Federal Climate Change Regulations
Cutting Through the Information Overload
The President’s Executive Order rolling back climate change-related initiatives, “Promoting Energy Independence and Economic Growth,” just came out today, and there’s already plenty of analysis to help people to understand its likely impact. While the short answer is that it is terrible for our country, the long answers tend to make people’s eyes glaze over if …
CONTINUE READINGA Motley Crew
Trump has placed about a dozen people in EPA. They’re already causing problems.
ProPublica has a list of Trump appointees to agencies. They can be aptly described as a motley crew. The most significant is probably Senior White House Advisor Donald Benton, a former Washington State senator and Trump’s regional campaign manager. Once ran a county environmental office. According to the Seattle Times, “he has an almost perfect …
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CONTINUE READINGClimate Change is the new He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named
And Scott Pruitt is the new High Inquisitor at EPA
Last week, after saying that he did not believe that carbon dioxide is the primary cause of climate change, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt reminded me for the second time since he took office of someone I met at age fifteen: Dolores Umbridge. Yes, that Dolores Umbridge, the one that functions as the main villain of the …
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