Pollution & Health
Rollin’ Coal!
One year in on Trump’s ‘Toxic First’ Agenda and the MAGA assault on environmental law.
They call it Rollin’ Coal — when you retrofit your diesel truck (and they are always trucks) to emit more pollution. A lot more. You may have seen the pictures: big dark clouds of fine particulates and a bounty of air toxics — a big f*#ck you to Prius drivers, environmentalists, and, well, all of …
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CONTINUE READINGOne Big Energy Idea for the Next Governor
The Drain is a weekly roundup of environmental and climate news from Legal Planet.
If the candidates running to be California’s next governor want a prepackaged idea for how to reduce pollution while making energy more affordable in 2026, here’s one that has been hiding in plain sight. Make a modernization plan to direct money for electrification that is currently being diverted unnecessarily into aging gas infrastructure. But don’t …
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CONTINUE READINGCalifornia Must Go Big to Save Big
A new Emmett Institute report shows how California can shift existing infrastructure spending from gas to electric to make homes and energy more affordable.
By Guest Contributor Craig Segall. California can still build big things – and in a new report today, my Emmett Institute co-authors, Denise Grab and Brennon Mendez, and I call for policymakers to think big on our energy system too. The headline: Tens of billions of dollars, annually, are available to make our homes cleaner …
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CONTINUE READINGTrump is Trying to Make Us Pay More for Gas
The Drain is a weekly roundup of environmental and climate news from Legal Planet.
At a White House photo op last week, surrounded by rich auto executives and congressional Republicans, Trump delivered his latest blow to Americans’ pocketbooks by announcing a policy change that could cost us consumers up to $185 billion when filling up our tanks at the pump. If you’re scratching your head trying to recall this …
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CONTINUE READINGSome Early Thoughts on the Dismantling of CAFE Standards
In short, the new standards are full of legal problems (and substantively awful).
It’s hard not to take personally this week’s overturning of the Biden Administration’s CAFE standards, and their replacement with standards that will, if finalized, reduce the projected average miles per gallon of the fleet from over 50 MPG to 34.5. The Biden standards were among my proudest accomplishments while serving at NHTSA (along with increasing …
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CONTINUE READINGTrump’s Baffling Free Pass for Coke Oven Pollution
Even for the Trump Administration, this seems really weird.
Trump just gave coke ovens a free pass for their toxic air pollution. What makes this so weird is not Trump’s reversal of a public policy protecting public health or of an action taken under Biden. Both of those are routine these days. Nor is it weird that Trump did so without the slightest factual basis. That’s also par for the course these days. What is weird is doing this after Trump’s own EPA director, who has no evident scruples about favoring industry, said no. There is no indication Trump was even aware of this fact. And it is even weirder, in that industry didn’t have a compliance problem in the first place and would save only pocket change from the postponement.
CONTINUE READINGThe CPUC Makes Good on Neighborhood Electrification
The state’s gas utilities tried to delay priority zones for decarbonization. The CPUC rejected that approach and has selected priority neighborhoods.
Here’s something to celebrate: the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) released its proposed decision designating initial priority neighborhood decarbonization zones. Loyal readers of Legal Planet will have followed our coverage on SB 1221, a law passed last fall that allows the CPUC to support “neighborhood decarbonization zones” to transition away from natural gas toward zero-emissions alternatives. Phasing out natural gas …
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CONTINUE READINGPointing a Finger at Methane
UCLA launches the STOP Methane Project with Top 25 in ’25 lists of methane super-polluters.
Almost exactly 10 years ago, I got a call from a Los Angeles city leader asking if I’d be willing to attend a town hall in Porter Ranch, California, to help field questions about the unfolding disaster that was the Aliso Canyon natural gas leak, to provide background on environmental law for the discussion. As …
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CONTINUE READINGAmerica’s Dirty Pictures: The Forgotten ‘Documerica’ Reminds Us How Far We’ve Come
The Documerica project, housed at the National Archives, provides a vivid window into environmental destruction circa the 1970s.
In recent decades, environmental laws have not only been challenged in courts and Congress; they’ve also taken a verbal beating. They’ve been denounced as “job killers”, “government overreach,” “radical environmentalism,” a “war on coal,” and, lately, just “woke.” It’s become all too easy to focus on the costs of regulation and forget why we adopted …
CONTINUE READINGGuess What? The Next 2 Weeks Are “National Energy Dominance Month”
October 17-31 has now been proclaimed to be an entire month, courtesy of Trump.
“National Energy Dominance Month.” So typical of Trump: a bungled exercise in foolish bravado. The “bungled” part is that they forgot to designate October as a special month until it was halfway over. The “bravado” saturates almost every sentence, combined with the fact that the blustering has no practical effect. And the “foolish” part is about bad energy policy and bad economics. To expand supply, he needs higher prices, but that would hurt him politically. And there’s no reason to think foreigners would pay them.
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