Pollution & Health
California Slowing Down on Cap and Trade
Yesterday, Mary Nichols slipped a bit of a bombshell into testimony before the California Senate Select Committee on the Environment, the Economy and Climate Change. She announced that the state’s Air Resources Board is planning to “initiate” the cap and trade program in 2012 but not “start the requirements for compliance” until 2013. This effectively …
Continue reading “California Slowing Down on Cap and Trade”
CONTINUE READINGSupreme Court Grants Review in Clean Water Act/Wetlands Case
2012 is shaping up as a busy year for environmental law at the U.S. Supreme Court. Today, as the Court recessed for the summer, the justices granted certiorari in a second environmental case that it will hear and decide in its 2011-12 Term: Sackett v. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, No. 10-1062. Sackett involves a development dispute between an Idaho …
Continue reading “Supreme Court Grants Review in Clean Water Act/Wetlands Case”
CONTINUE READINGA New Threat to Regional Government & Environmental Quality at Lake Tahoe
Back in the early `70’s, Bob Dylan wrote (and sang), “What looks large from a distance, up close ain’t never that big.” That Dylan lyric came to mind when reports recently emerged of the latest political controversy involving Lake Tahoe. Both nationally and internationally, there’s been substantial praise for the pioneering efforts at regional planning …
Continue reading “A New Threat to Regional Government & Environmental Quality at Lake Tahoe”
CONTINUE READINGYouTube persuasion
Why do some messages persuade, and others don’t? What is good science messaging? How can we reach new audiences about the importance of sustainable resource management? If you’re interested in these questions, you might like this video on overfishing, created by a couple of UCLA undergrads as extra credit for a class in oceanography. I …
Continue reading “YouTube persuasion”
CONTINUE READINGConn. v. AEP: Never Underestimate Congressional Power to Do Damage
Dan’s and Rick’s posts very helpfully summarize the impacts of the Court’s decision today. (They were also probably written at the same time: great minds think alike). But I’m a little more pessimistic than Dan is concerning Congressional action. He suggests that the decision makes it more complex for Congress to repeal EPA jurisdiction since …
Continue reading “Conn. v. AEP: Never Underestimate Congressional Power to Do Damage”
CONTINUE READINGSupreme Court Rejects States’ Climate Change Nuisance Lawsuit
The Supreme Court today issued its long-awaited decision in an important climate change case, American Electric Power v. Connecticut. http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/10pdf/10-174.pdf As expected, the Court rejected a public nuisance lawsuit that a coalition of states and private land trusts had brought against the owners of Midwestern coal-fired power plants, challenging their massive greenhouse gas emissions on …
Continue reading “Supreme Court Rejects States’ Climate Change Nuisance Lawsuit”
CONTINUE READINGSome Intriguing Statistics
I was recently paging through the new 2011-2012 Statistical Abstract of the United States (strange folk, we professors), and came up with some intriguing tidbits that I wanted to pass on: In the past fifty years, total water withdrawals have increased by 150% Carbon monoxide, ozone, sulfur dioxide, particulates and nitrogen dioxide all declined from …
Continue reading “Some Intriguing Statistics”
CONTINUE READINGAir Resources Board Releases New Environmental Assessment of Cap and Trade to Comply with Judge’s Order
The California Air Resources Board (CARB) is covering all its bases in responding to a judge’s order that CARB violated the California Enviornmental Quality Act (CEQA) in adopting its scoping plan to implement AB 32 (the state’s climate change legislation). As I reported last week, CARB has won an order from the appeals court allowing the state …
CONTINUE READINGGrandfathering bad air: EPA exempts power plant from new climate and air quality rules
EPA has issued a controversial decision exempting a new, natural-gas power plant proposed for California’s San Joaquin Valley, a region with some of the worst air quality in the country, from the most up-to-date Clean Air Act rules aimed at reducing climate emissions and the pollutants NO2 and SO2. Here’s the E&E story, and here’s the EPA decision, likely to …
CONTINUE READINGDueling Orders and Lots of Confusion in AB 32 Case
Yesteday, I described a California Court of Appeals order lifting the injunction preventing the California Air Resources Board (CARB) from implementing its cap and trade program. The order was apparently issued last Friday afternoon. Even in this age of instantaneous communication, however, apparently neither the Superior Court judge in the case, Earnest H. Goldsmith, nor the lead …
Continue reading “Dueling Orders and Lots of Confusion in AB 32 Case”
CONTINUE READINGJoin Our Mailing List
Climate policy is changing rapidly. Stay in the loop with expert analysis via email Monday - Friday.
