Politics
More Tree-Huggers, Please
The Anti-Environmentalist Epithet Actually Derives From India’s Great Environmental Justice Movement
If you want to insult an environmentalist, the standard go-to is to dismiss them as a “tree-hugger.” But where does the term come from? The answer might surprise you: The term ‘tree-hugger’ originated not as an insult but as a protest tactic. It is said to date back to 1730, when a village of Bishnois …
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CONTINUE READINGOne Cheer For “Corruption”
New Public Lands Bill Is A Triumph For The Environment — and an Attack on American Public Philosophy
Some unanticipated good news: The Senate on Tuesday passed the most sweeping conservation legislation in a decade, protecting millions of acres of land and hundreds of miles of wild rivers across the country and establishing four new national monuments honoring heroes from Civil War soldiers to a civil rights icon. The 662-page measure, which passed 92 …
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CONTINUE READINGEmmett Institute Publishes Issue Brief on California’s Clean Air Act Vehicle Authority
Co-Authored by Ann Carlson, Meredith Hankins, and Julia Stein
Cross-posted to the American Constitution Society’s ACSblog As we have previously covered in past Legal Planet posts, in an outright assault on public health and the environment, the Trump Administration recently proposed rolling back national motor vehicle emission standards put in place by the Obama Administration. As part of this proposal, the Trump Administration also …
CONTINUE READINGJohn Dingell, 1926-2019
The Surprising Environmental Record of Detroit’s Biggest Congressional Defender
There’s an old story about Rep. John Dingell, the long-running chair of the powerful Energy and Commerce Committee, who died yesterday at the age of 92, and served in the House longer than anyone in American history. Outside the office of the Committee, there is a huge picture of the Earth, taken from the Apollo …
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CONTINUE READINGI’ve Been Waiting My Whole Life for a Green New Deal
Get on Board or Get out of the Way: A Millennial Response to the GND
In 2016, millennials (those of us born between 1981 and 1996) surpassed Baby Boomers as the largest share of the US population. Yet you’d never know it by our relative shares of Congressional representation. Even after the great Millennial Wave of the 2018 midterm elections, millennials still only make up 6% of the House of …
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CONTINUE READINGTo Dream the Impossible Dream
What are the pros and cons of yesterday’s proposal for a Green New Deal?
The Green New Deal proposal introduced by Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Ed Markey is a call for drastic action to address climate change. Specifically, section 1(A) says that “it is the duty of the Federal Government to create a Green New Deal . . . to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions through a fair …
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CONTINUE READINGCommemorating a Major Environmental Disaster–One With a Transformative Legacy
1969 Santa Barbara Oil Spill Sparked the Beginning of America’s Modern Environmental Era
This week marks the 50th anniversary of one of the most serious and consequential environmental disasters in American history–the Santa Barbara offshore oil spill of 1969. On January 28, 1969, an offshore oil rig (Platform A) owned and operated by the Union Oil Company and operating in federally-controlled waters in the Santa Barbara Channel off …
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CONTINUE READINGClimate policy and horcruxes
What Harry Potter might have to teach us about making climate policy more resilient to political shifts
As the most recent report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change makes clear, the negative impacts of climate change are now upon us, and we have a very limited amount of time to decarbonize global economies in order to reduce the risk of catastrophic impacts from climate change, impacts that might begin as soon …
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CONTINUE READINGStraws in the Wind? Climate Change and the GOP.
There are some signs the GOP may finally bestarting to acknowledge the reality of climate change.
Is Republican climate denial starting to crack? The GOP’s official position has long been that climate change isn’t happening, or if it is, it’s not caused by humans, and anyway it’s not that serious and there’s nothing to be done about. Three events last week may be signs that this position is starting to weaken. …
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CONTINUE READINGRegulatory Review in Anti-Regulatory Times: Congress
Congress overturned a host of regs at the start of the Trump Administration. Looks more like a random walk than a systematic effort.
In theory, cost-benefit analysis should be just as relevant when the government is deregulating as when it is imposing new regulations. But things don’t seem to work that way. This is the second of two blog posts analyzing how costs and benefits figured in decisions during the past two years of unified GOP control of …
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