Land Use
What to Know About the TFFF Announced at COP30
A bold new investment fund aims to channel billions into tropical forest protection – one key change can make it better.
The world is losing vast swaths of forests to agriculture, logging, mining and fires every year — more than 20 million acres in 2024 alone, roughly the size of South Carolina. That’s bad news because tropical forests in particular regulate rainfall, shelter plant and animal species and act as a thermostat for the planet by storing carbon, keeping it out of …
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CONTINUE READINGIs Diversity A Strength? Not Always
Environmental history shows that specifics matter
To absolutely no one’s surprise, Zohran Mamdani defeated Andrew Cuomo Tuesday in the race for the Mayor of New York City, becoming the Big Apple’s first Muslim mayor. Also to absolutely no one’s surprise, much of the campaign against Mamdani descended into Islamophobia – less from Cuomo himself and more from his supporters and outside …
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CONTINUE READINGLighting Candles in Dark Times: Environmental Law Centers in the Trump Era
These law school centers show it’s possible find ways to make a difference.
Environmental law have become vibrant parts of the law and policy ecosystem. At a time when despondency seems all too common, the work of these law school centers offers beacons of hope for the future of environmental protection. Some of that work is playing defense — pushing back against deregulatory efforts — while other work plays offense by identifying innovative directions for environmental policy. A comprehensive survey isn’t practical, but I’ll provide examples from several different centers.
CONTINUE READINGCalifornia and Brazil Advance Joint Climate Action
The new MOU announced at New York Climate Week increased engagement and joint climate leadership ahead of COP30.
This week, California Governor Gavin Newsom led a high-level meeting with Brazil’s Environment Secretary Marina Silva to expand the long-running partnerships that exist between the Golden State and the largest country of Latin America. The meeting resulted in a new Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between both governments to continue to collaborate on climate action. Although …
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CONTINUE READINGThe perils of federal abundance legislation
Political polarization at the federal level is a steep obstacle to any major abundance reforms
I recently wrote an assessment of the ROAD Act, a bill in the US Senate that would do some (mild) changes to NEPA and develop some guidelines and incentives for state and local governments to amend their zoning to facilitate more housing production. While the ROAD Act may be fine policy, one question is whether …
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CONTINUE READINGLet’s All Play The Zoning Game!
SB 79 passes, but could there be a huge loophole in it?
Well, there’s the reason why the last election I ever won was for chalkboard monitor in the second grade. Last Friday, the California Senate passed the Assembly’s version of SB 79 (Wiener), which mandates higher densities and height restrictions within a half-mile of high-quality transit stops (with diminishing densities and heights the farther one goes …
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CONTINUE READINGThe ROAD to housing?
Initial federal legislation advancing more housing is limited in scope.
There’s been a lot of legislative action advancing housing production through reforms to land-use and environmental regulations at the state level, including California. Now, the federal government is every so gingerly stepping into the area. The ROAD Act passed unanimously through the relevant Senate committee last month. In this blog post I’ll provide a brief …
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CONTINUE READINGBread and Circuses and Journalism
How to get readers interested in housing and land use? Bring in reality stars!
If you want to get a good sense of the travails of the modern press, look no further than Politico’s recent writeup of SB 79, Senator Scott Wiener’s new bill to mandate upzoning around transit stops. Importantly, this isn’t because it’s a bad article but precisely because it’s a good article (and not just because …
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CONTINUE READINGClean up on aisle 131
Legislature should fix flaws in SB 131
As this year’s legislative session comes to a close, I want to highlight legislative action that I hope happens in the next session. I noted earlier that AB 130 and SB 131 both were important steps to advance infill housing in California by creating exemptions for infill housing from the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). …
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CONTINUE READINGMayor NIMBY
Karen Bass’ blocking of duplexes in devastated communities is a nasty piece of plutocracy.
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass gets a lot of unfair grief from the media and from Angelenos. Many criticized her for being out of the country when the Palisades Fire struck: but she was abroad in Africa representing President Biden (when in Congress one of her areas of expertise was Africa), and mayors do this …
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