Regulation

Update on Mountaintop Removal: Gov. Manchin Sues EPA

West Virginia Governor Joe Manchin announced Tuesday that West Virginia is filing suit to, as the Governor put it, stop EPA’s “attempts to destroy the coal-mining industry and our way of life.”  The Charleston Gazette has a good summary of the suit.  The suit seeks to invalidate EPA’s recent review of Clean Water Act permits …

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Jonathan’s Crazy: Prop. 23 Is the Most Important Environmental Initiative

Jonathan claims in this post that Prop. 23 — the California ballot initiative that would prohibit the state from implementing its climate change legislation — is NOT the most important environmental initiative on the California ballot this fall.  That honor, he says, goes to Prop. 25.  Prop. 25 reforms California’s rules for passing a state …

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Mountaintop Removal: Incompatible with Climate Solutions and Incompatible with the Environment

Monday thousands of people converged on Washington, D.C. for the Appalachia Rising Rally to protest mountaintop removal (MTR) coal mining.  Activists dumped 1,000 pounds of Appalachia dirt on EPA’s front lawn before marching on the White House.  At a sit-in at PNC bank, four people were arrested while protesting that bank’s financing of MTR coal mining. …

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Nanotechnology Regulation: The Future Is Here, Almost….Maybe

Apart from the reporting requirements in Berkeley, California, there is little public health or environmental regulation in the United States directed specifically at nanotechnology.  But in California, that may soon change.  In draft regulations released this month as part of its Green Chemistry Initiative, the Department of Toxic Substances Control specifically branded nanomaterials as chemicals …

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One More Try This Year for a National Renewable Electricity Standard

Is something, in terms of a federal renewable standard, better than nothing? There is new talk of setting a national renewable electricity standard before this session of Congress ends, due to the introduction of S.3813, this week. This Bingaman-sponsored bill echoes an earlier proposal that can best be described as imposing a standard of modest …

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And They’re Off…California Proposes New Chemical Regulations

California’s Department of Toxic Substances Control just released its proposed “green chemistry” regulations.  The regulations implement Assembly Bill 1879, which is a potential game-changer in how chemicals are regulated.  Eschewing the conventional risk management approach embedded in existing federal and state statutes, the regulations require affected manufacturers to engage in an alternatives analysis of consumer …

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WWWD (What Will Whitman Do) on Proposition 23 and AB 32? Whitman’s Seeing Green for the General Election

There’s renewed attention today on both AB 32 — California’s sweeping climate change legislation — and Proposition 23, the initiative that would derail it (see Rick’s post here about several state AGs considering suing to overturn AB 32 as unconstitutional and his post here about Berkelely’s study concluding, basically, that Prop 23 is a bad …

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State AGs Ready to Attack Constitutionality of California’s AB 32

An important postscript to my earlier post regarding Berkeley Law’s/CLEE’s newly-published white paper on Proposition 23. That’s the California initiative measure that, if approved by voters this November, would suspend implementation of that state’s Global Warming Solutions Act, better known as AB 32. The San Francisco Chronicle reports today that the Attorneys General of Alabama, …

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Berkeley Law/CLEE Publish White Paper on Efforts to Suspend California’s AB 32

Berkeley Law’s Center for Law, Energy & the Environment (CLEE) has today published, “California at the Crossroads: Proposition 23, AB 32 and Climate Change.” This white paper is intended to provide an objective, non-partisan analysis of California Proposition 23, an initiative measure that will appear on California’s November 2nd general election ballot. If enacted, Proposition …

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National Conversation on Chemical Exposure Drafts Available

I previously wrote about the National Conversation on Public Health and Chemical Exposures, the effort by the CDC and ATSDR to develop recommendations for action regarding chemical exposures.  The National Conversation  formed a series of work groups to focus on a set of specific areas, and develop draft recommendations.  Today through September 20th, the draft …

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