Pollution & Health

Cap-and-Trade is Alive and Well

Comprehensive climate policy is going nowhere at the federal level.  That’s obvious.  But U.S. inaction doesn’t mean that the rest of the world is following the U.S. lead.  Instead, around the world, countries are adopting policies to transition to cleaner energy sources and to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.  And cap-and-trade systems are as popular a …

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Klamath dam removal bill introduced in Congress

On November 10, Senator Jeff Merkley (D-OR) and Representative Mike Thompson (D-CA) introduced the Klamath Basin Economic Restoration Act in Congress (H.R. 3398 / S. 1851). The bill would approve two Klamath agreements and give the go-ahead to potentially remove four hydroelectric dams from the Klamath River. As we have discussed previously on LegalPlanet, this set …

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No (or at least little) net loss of jobs from regulation

We keep hearing the phrase “job-killing regulations” from the Republican side of the aisle, with environmental regulations generally at the top of their lists. Yet there has never been much evidence for the claim that government regulation is systematically bad for employment or the economy. To the contrary, scholars, this blog, think tanks (notably the …

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EPA sends GHG NSPS rules to OMB

On Tuesday, Nov. 4, EPA sent its proposed GHG rule for power plants to the Office of Management and Budget.  Not a widely reported story, perhaps because the internet was too busy misquoting EPA Administrator Jackson, who was speaking at Berkeley Law at the time.  Or perhaps because we do not actually get the proposed …

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UC Berkeley / UCLA Law Conference on Local Government Climate Change Policies

The UC Berkeley and UCLA Schools of Law are holding a free public conference at UC Berkeley on Friday, December 2nd to discuss local government climate change policies.  Conference speakers include some of the state’s top policy, business, and environmental leaders, who will report on promising ways that cities and counties can address climate change …

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Who Killed the Ozone Rule?

It seems that Bill Daley did: Obama’s surprise move to block an ozone regulation from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) followed immense pressure from industry trade associations, which made numerous personal appeals to White House Chief of Staff Bill Daley.  Daley met with the heads of several business groups more than two weeks before Obama …

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Lisa Jackson Speech

Following up on Holly’s post, here is video of the speech.  (And no, contrary to a rumor in the blogosphere, she didn’t call conservative critics “jack-booted thugs.”  Instead, as you’ll see, she commented that they used this term about EPA.) [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xcNeR6-EEGc]

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California Adopts Landmark Cap-and-Trade Program

Defying the trend in the rest of the country to ignore the perils of climate change, the California Air Resources Board voted today to establish the country’s first economy-wide cap-and-trade program covering greenhouse gas emissions.  The vote  comes five years after the state passed sweeping legislation — AB 32 — to roll California’s carbon emissions …

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When We Found the Right Words

It’s hard to talk about something if you don’t have the right words to designate it easily.  So it’s interesting to look for the first appearance for some of the key words in the legal literature.  Presumably, this words were in non-legal use a bit earlier, but their first use in law reviews tells us …

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Two tales of environmental ignorance

Citizens in Tokyo have discovered patches of radiation that are comparable to some of the evacuated areas near Chernobyl, radiation that presumably came from the recent nuclear power plant accident. The EPA has recently reported that the number of waterways in California that exceed water quality standards are 170 percent higher today than in 2006. …

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