Regulation
Will California’s Cap and Trade Program Stimulate Innovation?
Holly’s latest post about a new study showing that cap-and-trade programs have not led to technological innovation ends with a cautionary note that raises the key question about innovation and cap-and-trade programs to reduce greenhouse gas emissions: These results [showing no innovation] don’t mean that cap-and-trade has no role to play in policies directed at climate …
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CONTINUE READINGSupreme Court Sides With Property Owners in Wetlands Dispute With USEPA
The U.S. Supreme Court issued its decision in the most closely watched environmental case on the Court’s docket this Term: Sackett v. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. As expected following an especially lively set of oral arguments in the Sackett case earlier this year, the justices ruled–unanimously–in favor of the private property owners who had brought …
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CONTINUE READINGA Post Script to Steve’s Post about the Nuclear Renaissance
This just in from the NY Times: The Nuclear Regulatory Commission said a June breaker fire at the 478-megawatt Fort Calhoun nuclear plant was of “high safety significance,” increasing work the Omaha Public Power District (OPPD) must complete before the troubled unit can restart. The NRC’s preliminary “red” safety violation, the agency’s most serious classification, …
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CONTINUE READINGGoing Beyond the “Design-Basis Event”
A conventional approach to safety is based on the concept of design events. A building code might say, for example, that a building should be able to survive a 7.0 earthquake. This approach has been basic to the regulation of nuclear reactors. As the interim report of the post-Fukushima NRC task force explains: [The regulation[ …
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CONTINUE READINGSeismic Uncertainty
What happened last March 11 wasn’t supposed to be possible. The seismic hazard maps didn’t entertain the idea of a 9.0 magnitude earthquake off the Tohoku coast of Japan. But the Earth paid no heed to scientific orthodoxy. A massive slab of the planet’s crust lurched 180 feet to the east. It rose about 15 …
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CONTINUE READINGClimate “skepticism,” ideology, and sincerity
There’s an interesting discussion about a whole lot of things — for example, the sincerity of climate scientists and think tanks, the behavior of scientists, the relative funding of “skeptics” and climate scientists and others who believe climate change is happening and is caused by human activity — between my colleague Ann Carlson and Professor …
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CONTINUE READINGInconceivable!
During the Fukushima nuclear crisis, government officials and industry representatives said that the tsunami that struck the reactors was “beyond our imagination,” thus excusing the failure to consider such a risk in the planning process. As it turns out, there had been warnings about this possibility, but the risks were ignored. The reactor was situated …
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CONTINUE READINGPreviewing a VERY Big Week for Environmental Law in the Courts
UPDATE: The Associated Press reports that late Sunday, February 26th, U.S. District Court Judge Carl Barbier announced a one-week postponement of the trial in the BP oil spill case that had been scheduled to begin the next day. The postponement is reportedly due to substantial progress that has been made in marathon settlement talks that …
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CONTINUE READINGU.S. Supreme Court Rejects Montana’s River Ownership Claims
The U.S. Supreme Court has issued its decision in PPL Montana v. State of Montana, a fascinating case that combines the colorful history of the American West, the issue of the public’s access to state waterways, and a dispute over hefty royalties claimed to be owed the State of Montana for unpermitted use of public …
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CONTINUE READINGLegal Planet Takes Over the Yale Law Journal
Along with Dan, I also have a response to the Ewing/Kysar paper at YLJ Online. (For those of your keeping score at home, two out of three commissioned responses were Legal Planet bloggers: we win!). It should surprise no one that while Dan’s is elegant and technical, mine is cranky and dyspeptic. Here’s the abstract: This …
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