Politics
The Olympics of Climate Change: Warsaw 2013
What to know, where to watch
It’s that time again! The United Nations’ COP19/CMP9 Climate Change Conference kicked off this week in Warsaw, the start of two weeks of international discussion on climate change. The conference hosts the parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Kyoto Protocol, as a yearly update and check-in on these treaties, …
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CONTINUE READINGJohn Roberts: Stupid Like a Fox
Hiding Behind Anti-intellectualism to Obscure a Political Agenda
Chief Justice Roberts doesn’t think much of law reviews: Pick up a copy of any law review that you see and the first article is likely to be, you know, the influence of Immanuel Kant on evidentiary approaches in 18th-century Bulgaria, or something, which I’m sure was of great interest to the academic that wrote it, …
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CONTINUE READINGWho Does the Public Trust: Bureaucrats or Congress?
Voters would prefer EPA to make climate policy, not Congress. Is that a good thing? Yes and no.
Voters in swing states would prefer that EPA rather than Congress decide on U.S. climate policy. According to a poll commissioned by the League of Conservation Voters, “The voters are much more inclined to trust the Environmental Protection Agency than they are to trust members of Congress” — by a 66-12 margin. Here are my reactions …
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CONTINUE READINGDoes EPA Face a Crisis of Confidence?
Despite all the noise from House Republicans, EPA is just as popular now as 30 years ago.
Is the public losing faith in EPA? You might think so from all the rhetoric from the Right. But Pew has just released the results of a survey on public attitudes toward government, which doesn’t support this view at all. As it turns out, six out of ten Americans have favorable attitudes toward EPA. Nor has there …
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CONTINUE READINGSenator Vitter celebrated the shutdown of the EPA
I’ve written elsewhere about how some elements of the Tea Party and the Republican party have made clear that their goal is not just “reform” of environmental laws, but the elimination of all environmental regulations. Dan has noted the same point in looking at Ron Paul’s campaign platform in the last presidential election. Here’s another …
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CONTINUE READINGWhere Have You Gone, Justice Stevens?
The Supreme Court Misses Justice Stevens’ Influence & Perspective on Environmental Law
With the commencement of the U.S. Supreme Court’s new Term, it’s appropriate to note–and bemoan–the absence of a strong environmental voice on the Court these days. Until his retirement in 2010 after a quarter century on the Court, Justice John Paul Stevens ably served in that role. By contrast, none of the current justices seems …
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CONTINUE READINGClimate Denial and the First Amendment
The First Amendment protects even the right to support demonstrably false positions like climate denial.
The editors of the L.A. Times won’t publish letters by climate deniers, on the ground that they don’t want to take up valuable space with false information. Which raises the question: what does the First Amendment have to say about climate denial? Nothing in constitutional law is 100% clear, but here’s a stab at the …
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CONTINUE READINGCalfiornia Bans Lead Ammunition
New Law Is Welcome, But Probably Won’t Take Full Effect Until 2019
California Governor Jerry Brown has signed legislation that will ban the use of lead ammunition in California by hunters. In approving AB 711 (Rendon), Brown withstood furious lobbying efforts by the National Rifle Association and some (but not all) hunting organizations, who had urged the Governor to veto the legislation. AB 711 was supported by …
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CONTINUE READINGDenial As a Way of Life
Climate denial is closely related to debt-ceiling denial.
As it turns out, many of the same people who deny that climate change is a problem also deny that government default would be a problem. No doubt there are several reasons: the fact that Barack Obama is on the opposite side of both issues; the general impermeability of ideologues to facts or expert opinion; …
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CONTINUE READINGThe Debt Ceiling and the Environment
The House GOP plans to require a rollback of environmental regulations as a condition for raising the debt ceiling. This would be a massive power-grab by the House at the expense of the President and the Senate.
It slipped under the radar screen due to all the furor over the impending government shutdown, but the NY Times ran an important article two weeks ago about the debt ceiling. The Republican plan is apparently to condition their agreement to raise the debt ceiling and save the country from default on a massive regulatory rollback. …
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