Pollution & Health

UCLA 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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Lost 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.

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The 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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More 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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Everything 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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China 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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EPA 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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New nonprofit Harbor Community Benefit Foundation launches, seeks Executive Director to oversee millions of dollars in community benefits projects in Los Angeles’s near-port communities

A historic agreement between the Port of Los Angeles and various stakeholders has resulted in the founding of a new nonprofit organization, the Harbor Community Benefit Foundation.  HCBF’s mission is “to carry out mitigation and other public benefit projects that assess, protect, and improve health, quality of life, and the natural environment, with a focus …

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Millenium Development Goals Report 2011

We’re a little late on this, but early last month the United Nations issued its 2011 Millenium Development Goals report, which really should be at the top of the environmental community’s focus.  Usually, the MDGs are thought of simply as concerning poverty and development, but of course these issues deeply concern the environment.  More directly, although not …

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Some Good News, For a Change

The NY Times reports: On Friday, when President Obama is scheduled to announce even stricter standards — in fact, the largest increase in mileage requirements since the government began regulating consumption of gasoline by cars in the 1970s — the chief executives of Detroit’s Big Three are expected to be in Washington again. But this …

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