Politics
Previewing Next Week’s Climate Change Arguments in the U.S. Supreme Court
Big Stakes and Big Players in This Year’s Biggest Environmental Case
On Monday, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in the biggest environmental law case of its current Term, Utility Air Regulatory Group v. EPA. Legal Planet colleagues Ann Carlson and Dan Farber have already posted their thoughts on the case. Let me add mine. Utility Air Regulatory Group involves EPA’s authority to regulate stationary …
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CONTINUE READINGWould Californians be Better Off with a Fuel Tax instead of Cap-and-Trade?
Steinberg’s surprising proposal for California climate regulation
Climate regulation drama! Sen. Darrell Steinberg is floating a proposal that would change California law to take transportation fuels out of the cap-and-trade program, and to enact a new fuels tax instead. As background, distributors of those fuels are slated to join the cap-and-trade program in 2015, meaning they would need allowances to cover their …
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CONTINUE READINGWyoming Wind Power and California Electricity
Supporting renewable energy in Wyoming makes political sense
A company wants to build a lot of wind power in Wyoming. A lot. 3,000 megawatts. The size of three nuclear reactors. And ship all of the power to California. None of it will be used in Wyoming, where electricity primarily comes from coal, and where the state has been strongly resistant to various policies …
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CONTINUE READINGHow Legalizing Marijuana Could Help Fight Climate Change
The link between indoor grow operations and energy data
Now that the two states that just legalized marijuana sent their football teams to the Superbowl this year, it’s clear that the stars are aligning for legalizing marijuana nationwide. Sure, legalizing marijuana makes fiscal, moral, and practical sense, but what about the benefits to the environment? Well, it turns out that even the fight against …
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CONTINUE READINGIt’s Not Waste, It’s An Ecosystem
Letting rivers flow supports ecosystems and people
One thing that droughts in the West provoke are political battles over water. The drought that California is currently in is no exception. Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives have just passed a bill that would – more or less – exempt farmers in the Central Valley from environmental laws like the Endangered Species …
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CONTINUE READINGKeystone Nation: Mapping the Politics of the Pipeline
Keystone XL would run through a column of Red States and depopulating counties.
Looking at three maps sheds some interesting light on the the politics of the Keystone XL pipeline. The pipeline’s geography resonates in an interesting way with political and demographic geography. We can start with two maps that show the proposed route (on the left) and the dates in which counties reached their peak populations. You …
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CONTINUE READINGLightbulb Wars : The Saga Continues
Republicans win a largely symbolic victory for an obsolete technology.
Among the sleeper provisions of the new budget deal is a ban on enforcing federal lightbulb standards. This is a great example of symbolic politics — it makes Tea Party Republicans happy, has limited practical effect, and makes little policy sense. Or to put it another way, the enforcement ban is a dumb thing to …
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CONTINUE READINGThe ballot-box and urban infill
How the initiative power affects land-use decisions in California
Here at Legal Planet we’ve been paying a lot of attention to how CEQA affects land-use decisions. So has the legislature. And that’s fair enough. CEQA is important. And CEQA may well be deterring an important range of urban infill development that is environmentally important. But it’s not the only thing that affects urban infill …
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CONTINUE READINGCelebrating A Half Century of Federal Environmental Law!
Later in this year, we will celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the first modern environmental statutes, the Wilderness Act of 1964. NEPA followed five years later and then in quick succession came the creation of EPA, a slew of laws regulating pollution and toxics, the Endangered Species Act, and reforms of public lands laws. It’s …
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CONTINUE READINGAn Unhappy Anniversary for Hetch Hetchy
Is It Time to Consider Restoring Yosemite’s Hetch Hetchy Valley?
December 19th marks a sad event in American environmental history. It was 100 years ago today that President Woodrow Wilson signed the Raker Act, authorizing the City of San Francisco to build a dam that would flood the Hetch Hetchy Valley in Yosemite National Park in order to deliver water supplies to San Francisco. Contemporary …
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