Regulation
The CAFE Rollback Is Audaciously, Aggressively Awful
The proposal even rolls back standards that the first Trump Administration set.
This morning I blogged about some wonky reactions to the Trump/NHTSA rollback of the CAFE standards. Now I want to step back and highlight just how truly bad the new set of standards is, based on incredibly aggressive legal interpretations. As my first post highlights, the standards are set for ten years despite statutory language …
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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 READINGWe are Drowning in Plastic. Will a New Law Save Us?
The Drain is a weekly roundup of environmental and climate news from Legal Planet.
My family recently spent a warm November morning ankle-deep in mucky, brackish water, fishing out used condoms and syringes near Venice Beach. It stands out as one of the best days I’ve had all year. We were volunteering with Ballona Creek Renaissance, a local nonprofit that alongside Friends of the Ballona Wetlands organizes creek cleanups …
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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 READINGRed States and the American Free Enterprise Chamber of Commerce are Climate Champions?
The hypocrisy in Iowa v. Wright is nauseating.
Guess which parties made the following arguments about climate change in a recently decided Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals case, Iowa v. Wright? A group of red states and the American Free Enterprise Chamber of Commerce (AMFREE). The case involves an obscure but important formula, known as the Petroleum Efficiency Factor (PEF), applied when automakers …
CONTINUE READINGTurning Conservative Legal Theories Against Trump
Is the risk of legitimizing bad ideas worth it? Maybe so, under the circumstances.
Conservatives have been obsessed with the idea of a runaway federal government crushing everything in its path. They’ve been successful in promoting ideas to rein in Leviathan, at a time when by our lights the government actually was behaving very reasonably. But now we really do have a rampaging federal government. Conservative ideas could be very useful tools right now, and we shouldn’t hesitate to use them.
CONTINUE READING3 Lessons for a Regional Western Electricity Market
California is paving the way for the creation of an independent regional organization to oversee Western energy markets. It can learn from mistakes made in other regions.
In case you missed it among all the other news, the California legislature passed AB 825 in September (and Gov. Gavin Newsom signed it as part of the big energy package), paving the way for the creation of an independent regional organization to oversee Western energy markets. This presents a whole set of interesting challenges …
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CONTINUE READINGWebinar: Climate Policy without the Endangerment Finding
UCLA Law’s “Up in the Air” webinar explores the future of federal and state climate policy if the endangerment finding is repealed.
As Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin rushes to rescind the endangerment finding — which some have called “the Holy Grail of U.S. climate policy” — the UCLA Emmett Institute hosted an expert panel discussion on the reasoning and ramifications of such a move. The effort underlines “an extraordinarily dark time in U.S. environmental politics,” …
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CONTINUE READINGThe Forgotten Constitution
There’s a lot more than the “executive power” in there.
To hear Trump & Co., you might think that the Constitution was one sentence long, with that sentence vesting the executive power in the President. That’s the theory behind his efforts to remake the government – including environmental regulation – single-handedly. But there’s a lot more in there. Much of that forgotten language is directly relevant to the presidential actions that are now shaking the government, including environmental governance.
CONTINUE READINGDOJ Challenge to Vermont’s Climate Law Has a Problem
The EPA’s proposed repeal of the endangerment finding undermines the U.S. position in the Vermont Climate Superfund Case.
EPA’s proposal to rescind the Clean Air Act endangerment finding is not final but it is already causing problems for the Trump Administration in court. The Department of Justice today filed a brief for summary judgment challenging Vermont’s climate superfund law. Its principal argument? That the Clean Air Act — in regulating greenhouse gases — …
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