Politics

Misinformed Attacks on the Law of the Sea

Objections to the Law of the Sea Treaty are based on specious arguments about sovereignty.

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The Kennedy seat

It may be gauche to admit to worrying about this so soon after Ted Kennedy’s death, but the conversations have already begun: How much harder will it be to get to 60 votes on healthcare reform and, more relevant here, climate change legislation without his seat filled?  Massachusetts procedures for finding a new senator, and …

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More on the Chamber of Commerce’s extraordinary demand for a “Scopes trial” on climate change

UPDATE: regarding the standard of judicial review of any on-the-record hearing (discussed below), see the comments: commenter Steve Taber disagrees with my initial analysis, and he may be right (though I don’t have time to look into it further today). ORIGINAL POST: Holly has written a thoughtful post discussing the meritlessness and cynicism of the …

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Rep. Waxman, Sen. Pavley, and Mary Nichols talk climate change

For those of you interested in the relationship between federal climate legislation and California’s landmark global warming laws, tune in tomorrow 10am-noon PDT for a public forum at UCLA.  It will be live webcast here, and yes, we are apparently even twittering it.  Rep. Henry Waxman will talk about his work in passing the American Clean Energy and …

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Show Me The Money!

Guess what?  The oil industry is about to launch a populist campaign against climate change legislation.  (Stop me if you’ve heard this one before.) Why would they do such a thing? The latest statistics on executive pay may tell us something about that.  It turns out, according to Reuters,  that the top bracket of employee …

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And You Wonder Why People Don’t Respect Lobbyists?

A cap-and-trade bill was defeated in Australia yesterday.  As the New Republic points out (here), it’s not clear that this is anything more than a temporary setback. An interesting sidelight, however, concerns the sources of the opposition — some of which are U.S.-based: Incidentally, one of the largest, most influential opponents of the Australian bill …

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California’s Integrated Waste Management Board: Goodbye and Good Riddance

Shortly after taking office as California’s Governor, following a tumultuous recall election in 2003, Arnold Schwarzenegger famously promised to “blow up the boxes” of state government in favor of a more streamlined governance structure.  That commitment has since largely been sacrificed on the alter of ever-contentious California politics.  But this summer’s belated and painfully-negotiated California …

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Nudging Smart Growth

There are lots of problems with Sunstein and Thaler’s book Nudge, but its central premise has potentially powerful applications to a host of problems.  Sunstein and Thaler posit that in many policy areas, “choice architects” can  help people make better choices without impairing their actual ability to make that choice — a philosophy that they call …

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Trade laws and climate change regulation

Co-authored by Jesse Swanhuyser, UCLA Law class of 2011, formerly a fair trade advocate in California and Washington D.C. A prior version of this article first appeared in the Los Angeles Daily Journal, on July 23. As discussed in other posts on this blog, last month was particularly challenging for those working toward national and international climate agreements. At …

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The Death of Yucca Mountain

Over twenty years ago, the Supreme Court accepted the Nuclear Regulatory Agency’s assurances that it would find a safe method for long-term disposal of nuclear waste.  Consequently, the NRC was allowed to assign a zero to the risk of any radioactive discharge.  As it turns out, this was an empty promise.  The solution that the …

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