Oceans
Rough Sailing
The Clearwater, the Coast Guard, and the First Amendment
The Coast Guard forced a sail boat to leave a maritime parade because it had environmental slogans pinned to its mast. This sounds like outright censorship, but we need more facts to be sure of what was going on. This interview explains the issues.
CONTINUE READINGA Compendium of Good News
Hey, it’s not all gloom and doom out there.
We don’t lack for bad news these days. Still, there are also good things happening. I’ve been putting together a list of things that are good news for the environment. EVs, battery storage, and solar are growing around the world. So put on your happy face!
CONTINUE READINGJudicial Review of the Hegseth Gambit
Hegseth and the “God Squad” may have just stepped into a morass.
As expected, the Endangered Species Committee issued a blanket exemption, preventing any challenges to oil and gas drilling in the Gulf that threaten endangered species. Hegseth’s request for the exemption is premised on the existing (but possibly insufficient) protections that the government is currently giving endangered species. Thus, it’s not quite a license for Exxon to send out harpoon boats to kill off whales. It does, however, raise the suspicion that the current protections are grossly inadequate and that the government expected to lose in court, before in effect breaking the glass and pulling the red emergency lever.
CONTINUE READINGThe “God Squad” is Subject to a Lot of Limits. But I’m still worried.
Getting an exemption from the Endangered Species Act is normally difficult. But there’s a scary exception.
The Endangered Species Act Committee has been nicknamed the God Squad, on the theory that it holds the power of life and death over endangered species. It does the have the power to exempt from projects from the Endangered Species Act (ESA), although that’s not quite as ominous as it sounds. It’s understandable that many people freaked out when a Federal Register notice appeared announcing a meeting of the Committee relating to offshore drilling in the Gulf. We don’t have any specifics , What we do know is that the process is complex and cumbersome, and that there are important limits on the Committee’s discretion. There’s still reason to worry, however, because Pete Hegseth actually is the one with godlike powers over endangered species.
CONTINUE READINGSome Good News To Close Out This Year
Despite the Trump Administration’s attempts to bring the world into the dark ages, lots of light is blazing
I’m a pretty pessimistic guy. Finding the dark cloud behind the silver lining is something of a specialty for me. But maybe at the end of an atrocious year for environmental law and policy in the United States, we should look for the good news, and thanks to the good people at Canary Media, there …
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CONTINUE READINGThe Answers are Blowing in the Wind
A district court overturns the moratorium on offshore wind, deciding two key legal issues along the way.
The Trump Administration advanced two far-reaching arguments in this case. One is that, when the President directs how an agency should exercise its statutory authority, normal limits on agency action don’t apply. The other is that, even if an agency action is illegal, it must remain in effect against everyone in the world except the plaintiffs who challenged it in a specific case. We can expect the government to keep pressing these points, up to and including Supreme Court review. But the district court in the offshore wind case, along with other lower courts, correctly rejected these arguments.
CONTINUE READINGThe Top Ten Things to be Thankful for this Year
It’s been a horrible year for federal environmental law, but there are hopeful developments elsewhere.
This is, if not the winter of our discontent, at least the late autumn. In terms of federal environmental policy, 2025 has been a disaster. Trump’s previous term in office pales by comparison. But all is not gloomy. Outside of D.C., there have been encouraging developments within the U.S. and globally.
Here are ten of those positive developments.
Garbage In, Garbage Out, Garbage Everywhere
The collapse of international plastics negotiations demands a new, non-UN framework
Given all the garbage that we have to deal with nowadays, you might have missed the prospect of actual, non-metaphorical garbage this week: to virtually no one’s surprise, UN negotiations over an international plastics treaty collapsed this week. It’s easy to make jokes referencing The Graduate – and in fact I will – but this …
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CONTINUE READINGThe Trump Administration takes on the International Maritime Organization
International Maritime Organization
Once again, the new US thumbs its nose at international consensus.
Despite its constant chaos, the Trump administration is at base quite consistent in its approach to both international law and climate change — it seeks to minimize international cooperation while maximizing greenhouse gas emissions. No surprise, then, that the Secretaries of State, Energy, Commerce and Transportation last month issued a joint statement critical of the …
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CONTINUE READING(In?)sane With the Membrane
New developments in Deep Sea Desalination hold important promise for the freshwater crisis – and might require an amendment to Clarke’s Third Law.
The great speculative fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke’s Third Law reads: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” This principle came to me the other day when considering this interesting Wall Street Journal piece on Deep Sea Desalination (which we can call DSD for short). Virtually alone among environmental law professors, I am a …
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