Politics
Where 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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CONTINUE READINGCalifornia Enacts Nation’s First Comprehensive Fracking Law—And Everyone’s Unhappy
Controversial But Promising, SB 4 Constitutes Tangible Progress on the Fracking Front
Late last month the California Legislature passed, and Governor Jerry Brown signed into law, the nation’s first comprehensive system of regulating hydraulic fracturing, the oil and gas drilling technique more commonly known as “fracking.” It turns out that no one–the oil and gas industry, surface landowners or environmentalists–is particularly happy with the new law. And …
CONTINUE READINGEnvironmental Review of Free Trade Agreements
Why aren’t we talking about climate change?
Last week, the period for public comment on an interim environmental review of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade agreement closed, marking perhaps the last significant opportunity for public input on the environmental impacts of the proposed agreement. The review was conducted to identify potential environmental effects of the TPP, as required by an Executive Order …
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CONTINUE READINGNew Chemical Regulations Go Live in California
Making Prevention Real?
Today, after years of discussions and drafts, California’s new Safer Consumer Product regulations take effect. They create a comprehensive chemicals regulatory scheme having three steps: identification and prioritization of consumer products containing chemicals of greatest concern (“product-chemical combinations”); performance of “alternative analyses” by the manufacturers of those high priority product-chemical combinations; and selection of regulatory responses …
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CONTINUE READINGA New Climate Threat: “Academic Freedom” Laws
The other day I suggested that climate advocates ought to start working in school board elections as a way of building long term political support for vigorous climate action. Well, it looks like they will need to start playing defense as well. October’s Scientific American reports that climate deniers are now pushing the Orwellian “academic …
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CONTINUE READINGBreaking News: Ninth Circuit Upholds California’s Low Carbon Fuel Standard
Does California’s life cycle analysis of the carbon intensity of transportation fuel facially discriminates against out-of-state ethanol?
In a sweeping victory for the California Air Resources Board, the Ninth Circuit today issued an opinion in Rocky Mountain Farmers Union v. Corey upholding the state’s Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS) and reversing a lower court ruling that the LCFS facially discriminated against interstate commerce in violation of the U.S. Constitution. The court also vacated the …
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