Regulation
California legislature considers environmental bills
The California Legislature has several environmental and land use bills in front of it right now. Under state law, the legislature must act by August 31 in order to send any of these bills to the Governor for signature. Here’s a quick summary of the pending legislation, with some links for further info. (Current information …
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CONTINUE READINGNew NEPA procedures for offshore drilling
Cross-posted at CPRBlog. Today the White House Council on Environmental Quality issued a report on the NEPA analysis that preceded exploratory drilling at the ill-fated Macondo well in the Gulf of Mexico, together with recommendations for improving NEPA analysis in the future. According to CEQ, the Bureau of Ocean and Energy Management (successor to the …
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CONTINUE READINGA Beet Generation
On Friday, a federal judge revoked USDA’s approval of Roundup-ready sugar beets. Sugar beets are planted on ten million acres in ten states. The order was based on USDA’s failure to perform an environmental impact statement prior to the approval. Given that USDA’s raison d’etre is promoting agribusiness, it’s not surprising that environmental concerns are …
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CONTINUE READINGA Question on Agency Pre-emption of State Law
Dan, any reason to think that the powers that be will actually pay any attention to the ABA? As you know, the Bush Administration formally decided to ignore it regarding judicial appointments. On something like this, does the ABA have any status greater than your typical interest group? It would be interesting to see the …
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CONTINUE READINGAgency Preemption of State Law
Administrative agencies sometimes issue regulations that have the effect of overruling state law — and sometimes that is the sole effect of the regulation. This proved quite controversial during the Bush Administration, which used agency rulemaking efforts to cut back on state tort law. The ABA has a adopted a new resolution dealing with this …
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CONTINUE READINGJudge orders changes in ballot language for Proposition 23, which would suspend California’s greenhouse gas emissions law
Today, a judge ruled that the state must change the “title and summary” ballot language for Proposition 23, the oil-company-funded proposition that would suspend California’s landmark greenhouse gas emissions law AB 32. (My colleague Ann Carlson wrote about this initiative campaign earlier this summer.) Proposition 23 would render the law unenforceable until California’s unemployment rate …
CONTINUE READINGThree New Perspectives on Environmental Issues
Three recent books provide fresh and interesting perspectives on environmental law. The authors all graduated from law school in the past twenty years, and they all have most of their careers ahead of them. All of this augurs well for the future of environmental scholarship. The first book is Doug Kysar’s Regulating from Nowhere. Kysar …
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CONTINUE READINGPACE Advocates Keep Piling On FHFA
The hits keep coming. As I’ve been chronicling, the Federal Housing Finance Administration’s decision to effectively destroy the energy efficiency and renewable energy financing program called Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) is inviting serious legal and political blowback. First, California Attorney General Jerry Brown sues the feds, and now Sonoma County, the Sierra Club, and …
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CONTINUE READINGEnergy storage is key to the success of renewables in California
UPDATE: The bill summary linked below from the California Energy Storage Alliance actually summarizes a former version of the bill. The current bill version, linked below and here, is the best source now. The current version imposes no percentage mandate on utilities. Thanks to Ethan Elkind for pointing that out. UCLA Law and Berkeley Law recently …
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CONTINUE READINGUsing Disclosure as a Smokescreen: How Behavioral Economics Can Deflect Regulation
A key figure in behavioral economics recently issued a warning about over-reliance on its findings. In a NY Times op. ed, Dr. George Lowenstein raised questions about some uses of behavioral economics by government policymakers: As policymakers use it to devise programs, it’s becoming clear that behavioral economics is being asked to solve problems it …
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