Pollution & Health
A Trump Rollback Hits a Roadblock
A Trump gambit to undo a key air pollution limit turned out to be a flop.
The Administration has moved more slowly, however, on actually wiping Biden’s regulations off the books. On Friday, the D.C. Circuit decisively rejected one important effort by the Trump EPA. In doing so, it saved (at least for now) a crucial protection for public health. While it’s not impossible to imagine that the Supreme Court might intervene, doing so would probably require it to hear oral argument, given the importance and complexity of the case. That’s unlikely to happen quickly and may not happen at all,
CONTINUE READINGCPUC Proposed Decision Risks Derailing Gas Transition
California passed a promising Neighborhood Decarbonization Program. The CPUC’s plan for implementing SB 1221 sets it up to fail.
My UCLA colleagues and I have written extensively on the promising opportunity for SB 1221 to help interested communities transition off gas. Now, the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) has released its long-awaited proposed decision on its plans to implement the SB 1221 pilot program, and the proposal is…disappointing. The current design seems to set the program up to fail. Of biggest concern, the decision proposes to require pilot applicants to navigate a multi-stage process with duplicative …
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CONTINUE READINGAn Inconvenient Truth Two Decades Later
Global X via flickr
The Drain is a weekly roundup of environmental and climate news from Legal Planet.
Twenty years ago this month, I walked out of a movie theater, dumfounded, after seeing “An Inconvenient Truth,” the Al Gore documentary that would go on to frame the conversation around climate change for years. I remember feeling riveted and freaked-out. I’d read enough Adbusters in college to have a decent critique of capitalism, …
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CONTINUE READINGScrap Yards, Scrapped Enforcement?
The City of Los Angeles’s regulatory tools exist to protect communities from metal recycling hazards—but they’re rarely invoked.
This post was co-written by UCLA Law student Kate Inman (J.D., 2026). Throughout California’s Senate District 20, roughly thirty scrap metal recycling facilities sit in the industrial corridors running alongside residential housing. For the working-class, majority-Latino communities living blocks away, the legal system has been slow to respond. Drive through Sun Valley or Pacoima on …
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CONTINUE READINGClimate Journalism is “Breaking but Not Broken”
The Drain is a weekly roundup of environmental and climate news from Legal Planet.
The 2026 Pulitzer Prize announcements happened this week and environmental reporting was in the mix though not central enough if you ask me. Here’s where it shined: The Breaking News Reporting category was dominated by journalism covering climate-fueled extreme weather. Finalists included staff of the Seattle Times for more than 100 stories covering catastrophic …
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CONTINUE READINGMethane, Exposed
Two new reports from the UCLA Emmett Institute reveal some of the largest methane sources in 2025.
One of the transformations in the climate policy world over the last few years has been the (rightful and helpful) rise in focus on methane pollution. For a long while, carbon dioxide was the attention-grabbing greenhouse gas, the one at which most policy initiatives were aimed. And CO2 remains critically important, of course. But folks …
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CONTINUE READINGDoes Taking Oil Money Disqualify You from Being Governor?
The Drain is a weekly roundup of environmental and climate news from Legal Planet.
UPDATE: At the time I published this article, Xavier Becerra had received the max contribution from Chevron of $39,200. Since publishing, Becerra has received much more support in the form of independent expenditures. As of May 21, Chevron had given $500,000 to an independent campaign committee supporting Becerra for governor. As of May 12, California …
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CONTINUE READING‘Smog and Sunshine’: Achieving Clean Air in California
UCLA’s Ann Carlson discusses her new book and how the state can address federal efforts to undo its emissions standards.
Los Angeles is famous for both sunshine and smog. Turns out the two are related. Ozone pollution is caused by the interaction of sunlight and the chemicals that come out of vehicle tailpipes and factory smokestacks. But when Ann Carlson’s family first moved to Southern California, nobody knew what caused smog and there were no laws …
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CONTINUE READINGWe are Hitting a Major Methane Milestone
The Drain is a weekly roundup of environmental and climate news from Legal Planet.
This year, we celebrate 250 years since its discovery. No, I don’t mean America (though plans are underway to celebrate the semiquincentennial this July.) I’m talking about methane — that colorless, odorless, flammable and short-lived but super potent greenhouse gas that is helping heat the planet faster than carbon dioxide. It was 250 years ago …
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CONTINUE READINGWhy do Governments Around the World Use Supply-Side Regulations to Boost Clean Transport?
New CLEE report explores the benefits these policies provide to transition off fossil fuel dependency
While the U.S. may be backsliding on requiring more fuel efficient and zero-emission vehicles, the story globally is largely the opposite. Governments around the world are still seeking to improve air quality and meet greenhouse gas goals and are increasingly moving towards supply-side regulations for their vehicle fleets. These policies include fuel economy standards, emission …
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