Regulation
UCLA hosts live debate on Proposition 23 this Thursday evening
This Thursday evening, UCLA’s Institute of the Environment and Sustainability will be hosting a live debate on Proposition 23, co-sponsored by the Los Angeles Times, KPCC-FM (one of our NPR affiliates in Southern California), and UCLA Law’s Emmett Center on Climate Change and the Environment. More information on the debate, including a registration link, is …
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CONTINUE READINGMaybe Proposition 20 is the Most Important!
As long as everyone is getting into the act, we might as well also flag a critically important CA initiative for the environment that I imagine everyone else has missed: Proposition 20, the “California Redistricting Initiative.” I know — redistricting. You’ve fallen asleep already. You shouldn’t. Here’s the skinny:
CONTINUE READINGProposition 26: The most important ballot initiative affecting California’s environment?
*UPDATES: UCLA Law released a report analyzing Proposition 26’s impacts on the State’s environmental protection laws. And co-blogger Rhead Enion has responded point by point to some of Maureen Gorsen’s arguments criticizing our analysis of the initative.* My co-bloggers have argued whether Proposition 25 or Proposition 23 is more important to California’s environmental future. I …
CONTINUE READINGThe BP Deepwater Horizon Blowout and the Social and Environmental Erosion of the Louisiana Coast
In a lecture that I gave last week at the University of Minnesota, I discussed how the Louisiana Coast was under grave threat from erosion, rising seas, and pollution even before the explosion on the British Petroleum Deepwater Horizon platform. Whole communities have vanished under the rising water, and the livelihoods and communities of …
CONTINUE READINGGreener on the Other Side?: An Occasional Series Regarding California’s Green Chemistry Regulations
This is the first in a series of postings about Assembly Bill 1879 (AB1879), California’s “Green Chemistry” program. This summer California Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC) issued draft regulations, the comment period for which is currently open. Let’s start with the mega-view of the nascent program. In the organic statute, AB1879, DTSC was charged …
CONTINUE READINGUpdate 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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CONTINUE READINGJonathan’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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CONTINUE READINGMountaintop 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. …
CONTINUE READINGNanotechnology 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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CONTINUE READINGOne 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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