Regulation

Anti-coal satire (with My First Inhaler) punks Peabody Energy

Peabody Energy — last seen on this blog as the real party in interest whose proposal to mine more coal on Indian land in Arizona had to go back to the drawing board because of this UCLA environmental law clinic case , and immortalized in the John Prine song “Paradise”  — has been punked.  (I’ve …

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The story of the Price-Anderson Act: how Congress made nuclear power financially viable in the U.S. by eliminating accountability for risk

Ever wonder how nuclear power plants have been able to get financial backing in the U.S. despite the huge, and largely uncertain, potential risks they pose?  Or why there are nuclear plants within a few hours’ drive of major population centers such as Los Angeles and New York?  Or who will pay the costs that …

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Evaluating the claim that future environmental regulations have already made California the nation’s worst place to do business

I’m reasonably sure that chiefexecutive.net’s annual listing of “Best/Worst States for Business“ isn’t most people’s go-to source for information comparing various states’ business climates.  Nonetheless, the website’s annual survey just came out, and the Sacramento Bee is covering it as a story (with a promise of more coverage to come).  California — as usual — …

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Infill Builders at the State Capitol

Part of my work with UC Berkeley and UCLA involves gathering business leaders to discuss opportunities presented by climate change policies.  In the case of real estate development, the common refrain from sustainable developers seems to be to tell government to get out of their way and let them build more walkable, mixed-use communities around …

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Another victim of the budget deal: key US greenhouse gas data?

It was my wonderful law school professor Gary Blasi who first introduced me to the idea that “what gets measured, gets done.”  I’m thinking of him and reading this news in some mixture of awe (at our seeming collective ability to ignore problems) and anger (at same): The final fiscal year (FY) 2011 budget provides $95.4 …

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Gray Wolf Litigation Summary

I previously discussed the wolf delisting rider to the budget compromise bill. I thought it would be useful to summarize here the recent court opinions concerning the wolf, and consider the effects of the rider on those opinions.

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Changing Course on Consumption

We need to begin rethinking how much and what we consume, as well as how we produce the goods, services, and energy used by consumers.

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What Do Environmental Law Scholars Write About?

Some of our readers who aren’t in law schools  probably wonder what environmental law professors actually do. (Some of our readers who are in law schools might be wondering the same thing!).  I thought it might be helpful to provide a sample of recent scholarship.  Here are recent lists of working papers from SSRN.com, which …

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Think Tanks versus Advocacy Tanks

The mistake is viewing the Heritage Foundation as in some sense the counterpart of RAND, let alone the Harvard Economics Department — rather than being the pro-business counterpart of Sierra Club on environmental issues or of the AFL-CIO on labor issues.

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Damage Control for the States: Predicting the Outcome in AEP v. Connecticut

Yesterday I previewed Tuesday’s oral arguments in the U.S. Supreme Court’s American Electric Power v. Connecticut case, and two of my Legal Planet colleagues have already posted comments on certain aspects of those arguments. But let me cast discretion to the wind and predict the outcome of the case. Actually, it’s not that difficult a …

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