Politics
Kivalina and the Courts: Justice for America’s First Climate Refugees?
It’s hard not to sympathize with the Native Alaskan inhabitants of the Village of Kivalina. The 400 residents of Kivalina, a thin peninsula of land in Alaska jutting into the Chuckchi Sea north of the Arctic Circle, have the dubious distinction of being among the first climate refugees in the U.S. Their town is literally …
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CONTINUE READINGAnti-Urbanism in American Life: The Case of the Passport
For Thanksgiving, I was in Montreal for a family event, which was a little funny, since Canadian Thanksgiving went by about six weeks ago. But it did give me an opportunity to see a strange tick in one part of America’s self-conception. Take a look at your US passport. In the section for visas, you …
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CONTINUE READINGGingrich & The Environment
Given Newt Gingrich’s current spurt in the polls, it’s worth taking a bit of a closer look at his environmental views. He favors dismantling EPA, which should make him popular with the tea party. But apparently he has problems in that quarter: The reaction from some conservative commentators was swift and harsh. “Intellectually incoherent,” said …
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CONTINUE READINGJane Jacobs, Edmund Burke, and the New Urbanism
Jason Epstein’s Introduction to the 50th Anniversary edition of Jane Jacobs’ The Death and Life of Great American Cities makes this powerful intellectual connection: Death and Life … [is] about the dynamics of civilization, how vital economies and their societies are formed, elaborated, and sustained, and the forces that thwart and ruin them…Her sympathies are with the …
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CONTINUE READINGBeyond “NIMBY”
Brad Plumer has a thoughtful posting about NIMBYism over at WonkBlog. He points out that local opposition in Nebraska played a big role in getting the XL Pipeline delayed. More generally, Residents in Cape Cod have tangled up an offshore wind project for years, partly because it would obstruct scenic beach views. Solar farms in …
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CONTINUE READINGKlamath dam removal bill introduced in Congress
On November 10, Senator Jeff Merkley (D-OR) and Representative Mike Thompson (D-CA) introduced the Klamath Basin Economic Restoration Act in Congress (H.R. 3398 / S. 1851). The bill would approve two Klamath agreements and give the go-ahead to potentially remove four hydroelectric dams from the Klamath River. As we have discussed previously on LegalPlanet, this set …
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CONTINUE READINGU.C. Davis’ “CEQA at 40” Conference Now Available Online
On November 4th, the U.C. Davis School of Law’s California Environmental Law & Policy Center hosted “CEQA at 40: A Look Back & Ahead.” Celebrating the 40th anniversary of California’s bedrock environmental law, the California Environmental Quality Act, the conference drew some 400 attendees to U.C. Davis, with many more viewing the proceedings via a …
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CONTINUE READINGDatabase of Anti-Environment Votes in 112th Congress
To date, 170 anti-environmental votes have been taken in the GOP-led House of Representatives by the 112th Congress. It’s difficult to keep track of the good, the bad, and the ugly coming out of the House. One tool to help track the action in Washington is a new searchable database of anti-environment votes. “The House has voted …
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CONTINUE READINGGOP Postmodernism Continues Apace
It’s bad enough that Republicans have declared war on science, and war on facts: now they are declaring war on math. Newt Gingrich says that the Congressional Budget Office should be abolished, mainly it will tell him things that he doesn’t like. As Brian Beutler of TPM notes, any attempt to repeal health care reform …
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CONTINUE READINGWho Killed the Ozone Rule?
It seems that Bill Daley did: Obama’s surprise move to block an ozone regulation from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) followed immense pressure from industry trade associations, which made numerous personal appeals to White House Chief of Staff Bill Daley. Daley met with the heads of several business groups more than two weeks before Obama …
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