Regulation
U.C. Davis’ “CEQA at 40” Conference Now Available Online
On November 4th, the U.C. Davis School of Law’s California Environmental Law & Policy Center hosted “CEQA at 40: A Look Back & Ahead.” Celebrating the 40th anniversary of California’s bedrock environmental law, the California Environmental Quality Act, the conference drew some 400 attendees to U.C. Davis, with many more viewing the proceedings via a …
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CONTINUE READINGEnergy Storage in California by 2020: A New Report From the California Energy Commission
Yesterday, the California Energy Commission’s Public Interest Energy Research (PIER) program released a strategic assessment of energy storage technologies in California by 2020. The report was prepared by a three-campus University of California team, including Berkeley Law, UC Los Angeles, and UC San Diego. Along with co-blogger Steve Weissman and Jessica Intrator (who did the …
CONTINUE READINGAdministration reportedly will put off Keystone XL decision
The Washington Post is reporting that the Obama Administration will study alternative routes for the Keystone XL pipeline, delaying a final decision on the pipeline until after the 2012 elections. There had been a perception that the Administration felt caught between environmentalists and unions on the pipeline issue. Nebraska’s opposition to the current proposed route, …
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CONTINUE READINGEPA sends GHG NSPS rules to OMB
On Tuesday, Nov. 4, EPA sent its proposed GHG rule for power plants to the Office of Management and Budget. Not a widely reported story, perhaps because the internet was too busy misquoting EPA Administrator Jackson, who was speaking at Berkeley Law at the time. Or perhaps because we do not actually get the proposed …
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CONTINUE READINGGOP Postmodernism Continues Apace
It’s bad enough that Republicans have declared war on science, and war on facts: now they are declaring war on math. Newt Gingrich says that the Congressional Budget Office should be abolished, mainly it will tell him things that he doesn’t like. As Brian Beutler of TPM notes, any attempt to repeal health care reform …
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CONTINUE READINGUC Berkeley / UCLA Law Conference on Local Government Climate Change Policies
The UC Berkeley and UCLA Schools of Law are holding a free public conference at UC Berkeley on Friday, December 2nd to discuss local government climate change policies. Conference speakers include some of the state’s top policy, business, and environmental leaders, who will report on promising ways that cities and counties can address climate change …
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CONTINUE READINGLisa Jackson Speech
Following up on Holly’s post, here is video of the speech. (And no, contrary to a rumor in the blogosphere, she didn’t call conservative critics “jack-booted thugs.” Instead, as you’ll see, she commented that they used this term about EPA.) [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xcNeR6-EEGc]
CONTINUE READINGTrolling for Anti-Environmental Plaintiffs
A reader sent me a an email from the Coalition of Energy Users trying to find plaintiffs for a challenge to AB 32 implementation. CEU claims to be a grassroots group that does not have a deep-pocket funding source, and that may be true. On the other hand, its interests are so precisely aligned with …
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CONTINUE READINGThe Credibility of Climate Science
Climate denialists contend that climate science is either the result of a conspiracy of some kind or of groupthink plus institutional incentives to support alarmist predictions. The conspiracy theory makes even less sense than most conspiracy theories, because there would have to be hundreds, perhaps thousands of people involved, scattered across the world at numerous …
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CONTINUE READINGIf Cost-Benefit Analysis is Good, Is More Cost-Benefit Analysis Always Better?
Presidential and congressional requirements for cost-benefit analysis should also recognize that
data availability may be an implementation issue, and that additional resources may be necessary
for the agencies conducting these analyses. In some cases, the data that agencies need to estimate
the costs and benefits of their rules may not exist, or may only be available from regulated
entities.128 Although there is no “typical” cost-benefit analysis (just as there is no “typical” rule),
the cost of conducting many individual regulatory analyses has been in the hundreds of thousands
of dollars.129 If more agencies are required to prepare more detailed analyses for more rules, it is
unclear how the agencies will be able to do so without more resources.130 As noted earlier in this
report, if agencies are required to prepare cost-benefit analyses for rules that are not expected to
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