Regulatory Policy
Scott Pruitt, Senator Harris and the California Question
California leadership in peril?
Scott Pruitt, Donald Trump’s nominee to head the Environmental Protection Agency, elided many questions yesterday and made some somewhat surprising commitments to appease Senate Democrats in response to others (acknowledging that humans are at least partially responsible for climate change; saying he’ll use the Clean Air Act to regulate greenhouse gases). But his response to …
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CONTINUE READINGWillful Ignorance
As with climate science, Trump is in denial about public health issues.
Anti-vaxxers are a lot like the climate denial crowd, but with two differences. First, there hasn’t been any corporate money fomenting skepticism about vaccines, unlike climate denial. Second, anti-vaxxers are sprinkled across the ideological spectrum. Still, the similarities between these two forms of anti-scientism are greater. One big similarity: both anti-science views have the support …
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CONTINUE READINGThe Ninth Circuit’s Top Environmental Law Decisions of 2016
Climate Change, Endangered Species Act, NEPA, Constitutional Challenges Dominate Court of Appeals’ Docket
In 2016, at least, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit was the most important and influential court in the nation when it comes to environmental law. That’s true for two reasons: first, the U.S. Supreme Court only issued one significant environmental law decision last year, in U.S. Army Corps of Engineers v. Hawkes …
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CONTINUE READINGThe California Supreme Court’s Top Environmental Law Decisions of 2016
CEQA, Property Rights, Preemption & Clean Water Act Highlight Supreme Court’s Environmental Docket
While 2016 was a quiet year for the U.S. Supreme Court when it came to environmental law, the same cannot be said for the California Supreme Court. To the contrary, 2016 continued a pronounced and significant trend by the California Supreme Court justices in recent years to hear and decide numerous important environmental law issues …
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CONTINUE READING2016: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
“But except for that, how did you like the play, Mrs. Lincoln?” It’s an old joke, for all I know going back to 1865. That was 2016,too, in a way. Like Mrs. Lincoln’s evening at Ford’s Theater, 2016 contained a lot of good things, some bad things, and then disaster. Here’s a list of each. The …
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CONTINUE READINGUpdate on the Litigation Over EPA’s Rule Controlling Greenhouse Gas Emissions from New Power Plants
UCLA Faculty File Amicus Brief on Behalf of Technological Innovation Experts
Late in 2015, the Environmental Protection Agency issued New Source Performance Standards to control greenhouse gas emissions from new and modified fossil-fuel-fired power plants under the Clean Air Act. This regulation is a companion to the more-often-discussed Clean Power Plan rule, which addresses greenhouse gas emissions from existing sources in the power generation sector. Last …
CONTINUE READINGWill Deregulation Grow the Economy?
The Trump plan of deregulation and tax cuts has been tried. It didn’t work.
President-elect Trump has promised to unleash economic growth by cutting taxes and regulation. In terms of regulations, he has said: “One of the keys to unlocking growth is scaling-back years of disastrous regulations unilaterally imposed by our out-of-control bureaucracy. “Regulations have grown into a massive, job-killing industry – and the regulation industry is one business …
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CONTINUE READINGIt’s Déjà Vu All Over Again
Reagan, Gingrich, Bush — and Now Trump. This is a battle we’ve fought before.
As the choice of Scott Pruitt to head EPA confirms, we’re about to face a radical attack on environmental protection. We’ve seen this movie before. Three times, actually, starring Ronald Reagan, Newt Gingrich, and George W. Bush. So this feels in a way like the fourth installment in a horror film franchise. Call it “Return of the …
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CONTINUE READINGLegal Mandates to Consider the Social Cost of Climate Change
Considering climate impacts isn’t just a good idea. It’s the law.
Many people seem to think that considering climate impacts and the social cost of carbon was just a policy decision by the Obama Administration, which Trump if he doesn’t buy the reality of climate change. But it’s not that easy. But there are strong arguments that considering climate change is mandatory. First, the whole idea of considering …
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CONTINUE READINGTrump Has Thrown Down the Gauntlet
Trump’s latest cabinet appointment confirms the pattern: he plans to govern from the far Right.
Given that Trump has shifted his positions so often, there’s always been at least a faint hope that he would rethink his vehement opposition to environmental protection. True, he had called climate change a Chinese hoax, but he later said he had an open mind about the Paris Agreement and then he had an apparently …
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