Pollution & Health
Is Cap and Trade Unfair?
I should probably start by putting my cards on the table. I’m not really an advocate of cap and trade as compared with other forms of regulation. What I care about is getting effective carbon restrictions in place, whether they take the form of cap and trade, a carbon tax, industry-wide regulations, or something …
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CONTINUE READINGMurder, Pollution, Illegal Drugs & Our Public Lands
The murder this past weekend of Fort Bragg, California City Councilman Jere Melo puts an all-too-human face on a long-festering environmental crisis. Melo was shot and killed in a remote area in Mendocino County by a squatter who was reportedly growing marijuana on forest lands there. Councilman Melo, whose day job was to manage 150,000 …
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CONTINUE READINGQuest for the Best
Public Health Degree has a list of the twenty cities in the world with the cleanest air. (I was pleased to see my prior home Minneapolis on the list — not surprisingly, my current home in the Bay Area didn’t qualify.) That got me interested in looking for other listings of high environmental quality. There …
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CONTINUE READINGUCLA Emmett Center Assessment of California’s Cap and Trade Regulations
In the wake of the financial market meltdown and liquidity crisis of 2008, some opponents of a cap and trade program to regulate greenhouse gas emissions have argued that such a system could lead to the kind of market manipulation that led to the 2008 crash. The UCLA School of Law Emmett Center on Climate Change and the Environment today released …
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CONTINUE READINGLost in the Ozone Again
Should Perry get credit for any recent downward trend ozone?The State’s reported downward trend in ozone levels began in 2006 at the earliest, whereas Perry took office in 2000 when Bush resigned.
CONTINUE READINGThe Environmental Issue in the Presidential Race
With the partial exception of Mitt Romney, all of the Republican presidential candidates are negative about EPA. According to the NY TImes, Opposition to regulation and skepticism about climate change have become tenets of Republican orthodoxy, but they are embraced with extraordinary intensity this year because of the faltering economy, high fuel prices, the Tea …
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CONTINUE READINGMore on California Environmental Leader & Coastal Advocate Peter Douglas
Legal Planet colleague Jonathan Zasloff has previously written about the recently-announced retirement of long-time California Coastal Commission Executive Director Peter Douglas. I’d like to add a few additional comments about Peter, my long-time mentor, client and friend. Peter Douglas has devoted the past four decades of his incredibly rich and active life to the cause of …
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CONTINUE READINGEverything You Wanted to Know About Deepwater Horizon But Were Afraid to Ask
NOAA has put together a very helpful bibliography of peer-reviewed research on the oil spill, Deepwater Horizon: A Preliminary Bibliography of Published Research and Expert Commentary. It includes peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters, technical reports released by scientific agencies and institutions, and editorials published in peer-reviewed journals. The peer-reviewed publications and technical reports in …
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CONTINUE READINGChina and the Environment: Some Progress on Lead Pollution
It’s a pleasure to be joining the excellent group here at Legal Planet. My focus will largely be on issues related to China and its environmental and energy challenges. I returned to the U.S. last month after seven years working in China on environmental protection and legal reform (mostly for the Natural Resources Defense Council). …
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CONTINUE READINGEPA to Continue Emissions Trading in Place of Clean Air Interstate Rule
With the success of the 1990 cap and trade program for sulfur dioxide (the major cause of acid rain), cap and trade has become one of the dominant regulatory means to control air pollution in the U.S. And, of course, cap and trade remains one of the central mechanisms to control greenhouse gases in those …
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