Toxic Substances

The Ninth Circuit Makes EPA an Offer It Can’t Refuse

Regulate chlorpyrifos or else!

Chlorpyrifos is one of the most widely used pesticides in America, although it has been banned in the EU.  Last week, the Ninth Circuit took the extraordinary step of ordering EPA pointblank to ban or reduce traces of chlorpyrifos in food. A dissenter accused the majority of misreading the statute in question and abusing its …

CONTINUE READING

Guest Contributors Kelsey Manes & Ashley Sykora: State Should Clean Up Los Angeles Parkways Impacted by Exide Pollution

Parkway garden in Los Angeles

Communities for a Better Environment and UCLA Environmental Law Clinic Urge State Agency to Reevaluate Inequitable Cleanup Proposal

We are UCLA Law students enrolled in the Frank G. Wells Environmental Law Clinic, a class in which students work on behalf of community and environmental groups to help advance client goals through legal advocacy. This semester, we worked with Communities for a Better Environment, a community-based environmental justice organization that works in heavily polluted …

CONTINUE READING

Guest Contributor Aimee Barnes: How the Biden Administration’s Environmental Justice Mapping Tool Can Identify and Target Benefits to Disadvantaged Communities

Lessons Learned From CalEnviroScreen

Just one week after his inauguration, President Joe Biden designated January 27 “Climate Day” at the White House and signed a number of executive orders, including one aimed to “secure environmental justice (EJ) and spur economic opportunity.” Under this executive order, President Biden took the first steps to make good on his campaign’s EJ commitments. …

CONTINUE READING

EV Battery Supply Chain Sustainability & Mining

Register for forthcoming report launch webinar on Thursday, July 23rd, from 9-10am PT

The adoption of millions of electric vehicles needed to combat climate change will mark a major shift in mining activities across the world. To get the needed lithium, cobalt and other minerals for the batteries, countries and companies are turning to deep-sea mining, lithium deposits in Nevada and California’s Salton Sea, and further exploiting resources …

CONTINUE READING

How Sustainable is the Electric Vehicle Battery Supply Chain?

New CLEE and NRGI “FAQ” released today addresses common misconceptions

Co-authored with Ted Lamm and Patrick Heller (advisor at the Natural Resource Governance Institute and a senior visiting fellow at CLEE) The global transition from fossil fuel-powered vehicles to electric vehicles (EVs) will require the production of hundreds of millions of batteries. The need for such a massive deployment raises questions from the general public …

CONTINUE READING

Dark Waters in Dark Times

Citizen Petition Presses EPA To Call Chemicals in Environmental Docudrama “Hazardous Waste”

This holiday season, A-list actors drew moviegoers to a film with a distinctly un-Hollywood plot line:  A company dumps thousands of pounds of toxic, long-lived chemicals (PFAS, or per-and polyfluoroalkyl substances) into unlined pits that drain into a farming community’s drinking water.  Local residents fall ill, some terminally.  A heroic attorney (Mark Ruffalo) represents them …

CONTINUE READING

Goodbye, Cleveland!

Newspaper Collapse Threatens The Environment: Universities Need To Fill The Gap

In 1970, Cleveland’s Cuyahoga River famously caught fire. This past week, we have seen an even worse environmental disaster for the city: The Plain Dealer on Monday laid off 14 newsroom employees as part of a staff reduction first announced in December. The 14, most of them reporters and all members of Local 1 of …

CONTINUE READING

Ray of Hope in Eastern Europe

Environmental Issues Help Foster Victory for Democratic Forces

The world got some very good news yesterday when political newcomer Zuzana Caputova, a political newcomer, won a smashing victory in Slovakia’s President elections. Unlike the right-wing authoritarians like Hungary Viktor Orban and Poland’s Law and Justice Party, which have dominated east European politics in recent years, Caputova, is a political liberal, strongly committed to …

CONTINUE READING

Coastal Communities Demand EPA Update Decades-Old Oil Spill Regulations

Written in Collaboration with Camila Gonzalez*

Coastal communities are bracing themselves. Thirty years after the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska, and almost nine years after the BP Deepwater Horizon rig explosion in the Gulf of Mexico, they are facing the threat of another catastrophic oil spill. The Trump Administration is paving the way. The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management will …

CONTINUE READING

Governance on the Ground—Evaluating Pesticide Regulation in California

California uses more pesticides than any other U.S. state, primarily because of the large acreage of high value specialty crops. Photo credit: Fotokostic, Shutterstock

In a new study, UCLA and USC researchers find that California state and county officials are falling short in evaluating use of agricultural pesticides.

Editor’s note: a new report from researchers at UCLA and USC provides a systematic review of California’s county-level regulation of pesticides. Read the report, a 4-page summary, and a press release.  It is well known that the law on the ground often looks quite different than the law on the books. California’s pesticide regulatory program …

CONTINUE READING

TRENDING