Politics
Guest Blogger Kate Konschnik: EPA’s 111(d) Authority – Follow Homer and Avoid the Sirens
Kate Konschnik is the Director of Harvard Law School’s Environmental Policy Initiative. The views expressed in this blog post are her own. Thirty years ago, Chevron v. NRDC set the standard for judicial deference to an agency’s statutory interpretation. In that case, the Supreme Court upheld EPA’s interpretation of Clean Air Act language. This month, …
CONTINUE READINGThe Los Angeles River and GOP Ideology: Everybody Wins!
A few years ago, I heard Bruce Babbitt here at UCLA describe the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers as “just a terrible agency.” Then he repeated it, just to make sure that we all heard him. When a politician does something like that, you know that he’s reached the end of his rope. The Los …
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CONTINUE READINGReassuringly Stupid
The House GOP’ is trying to stop the Pentagon from thinking about climate change. Here’s why it won’t work.
The military considers climate change to be a threat to national security. Naturally, that’s news that the House Republicans would like to suppress. Last week, they tried to do something about it with an appropriations rider. Luckily, the amendment is so poorly drafted that it would accomplish almost nothing. Here’s the language of the amendment: None …
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CONTINUE READINGWhat Will India’s New Regime Do About Climate?
Modi Will Make Solar-Powered Trains Run On Time
When the world’s largest democracy goes through a political earthquake, people around the world notice, even in the United States. So the victory of the right-wing Hindu nationalist Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) and its authoritarian leader Narendra Modi, has the pundits scurrying to explain what it all means. Much of the early analysis is pessimistic, …
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CONTINUE READINGThom Tillis, the GOP Establishment, and the Environment
Tillis is not a Tea Party extremist on regulatory issues, but he’s also been no friend of environmental protection .
Thom Tillis’s victory in the North Carolina primary for U.S. Senate was widely seen as a victory for the Republican Establishment over the Tea Party. What does this mean on environmental issues? In other word, where do “Establishment Republicans” stand on the environment? In Tillis’s case, lowering regulatory costs seems to be the highest priority. …
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CONTINUE READINGAn Opening for Climate Adaptation?
Marco Rubio seems willing to admit that climate change exists and is causing real problems. That’s a start.
During an interview with ABC’s Jonathan Kent, Marco Rubio made a very interesting statement about climate change. He took the standard anti-science position about the causes of climate change. “I do not believe that human activity is causing these dramatic changes to our climate the way these scientists are portraying it,” he said. He went on …
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CONTINUE READINGEnding Corporate Welfare for Oil
“There Will Be Blood” was the title of 2007 movie about an old-time oilman. If you were doing a similar movie about the situation today, you might call it, “There Will Be Tax Write-Offs.” The taxpayers have been generous to the industry. Oil companies get about $5 billion per year in favored tax treatment. Mostly, …
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CONTINUE READINGRenewable Energy and Political Geography
The Washington Post had a story over the weekend about the concerted campaign by the fossil fuel industry to rollback state laws favoring renewable energy. This effort was also the subject of an editorial in the Sunday Times. So far, this effort hasn’t gained real legislative traction. The story attributes this failure to the growth …
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CONTINUE READINGThe Missing of Summer Lawns*
It’s Time to End the Wasteful Practice of Irrigating California’s Residential Landscaping With Fresh Water
What a difference a drought makes. Once upon a time, a fundamental attribute of home ownership in California and the American West was an expansive, verdant lawn surrounding private homes, townhouses and apartment complexes. Indeed, some communities have historically imposed permit conditions or adopted local ordinances mandating the inclusion and maintenance of lush, healthy lawns …
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CONTINUE READINGA New Low for Fictional News Network
Guess which cable news network misleads on climate?
Well, what a shock: To gauge how accurately [cable news] networks inform their audiences about climate change, the Union of Concerned Scientists analyzed the networks’ climate science coverage in 2013 and found that each network treated climate science very differently. Fox News was the least accurate; 72 percent of its 2013 climate science-related segments contained …
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