Transportation
Why is Trump Getting the Cold Shoulder from the Car Companies?
The answer: His rollback promises them little profit and much uncertainty.
Usually, you’d expect a regulated industry to applaud an effort to lighten its regulatory burdens. So you would think that the car industry would support Trump’s effort to roll back fuel efficiency standards for new vehicles and take away California’s authority to set its own vehicle standards. But that effort is being met by silence …
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CONTINUE READINGWhat DO You Call Someone Who Rides a Scooter?
The Dangers Of Pigeonholing
Meredith’s now-classic post on scooters buried within it a crucial question: what do you call someone who rides a scooter? Meredith herself suggested “scooterist” or “scooter-rider.” The hard-working staff here at Legal Planet fiercely debated the issue. I originally thought that the name for someone who rides a “scooter” is…”scooter.” The point is that …
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CONTINUE READINGWhat I Wish The Green New Deal Hadn’t Left Out
Greening our infrastructure is part of the solution, but so’s city planning.
While there’s certainly been no shortage of criticism of last week’s Green New Deal resolution, the common line hasn’t been that the resolution doesn’t try to cover enough ground. On the contrary, it’s been called an everything-but-the-carbon-sink approach; even Trevor Noah devoted a few minutes of the Daily Show to gaping at the proposal’s efforts …
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CONTINUE READINGGovernor Newsom Retreats On High Speed Rail
Revised Merced-Bakersfield vision in “State of the State” speech indicates reluctance to spend political capital
Governor Newsom’s “State of the State” speech today offered an abrupt scaling back of the state’s vision for its signature infrastructure project, high speed rail from Los Angeles to San Francisco: [L]et’s level about high speed rail. I have nothing but respect for Governor Brown’s and Governor Schwarzenegger’s ambitious vision. I share it. And there’s …
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CONTINUE READINGEmmett Institute Publishes Issue Brief on California’s Clean Air Act Vehicle Authority
Co-Authored by Ann Carlson, Meredith Hankins, and Julia Stein
Cross-posted to the American Constitution Society’s ACSblog As we have previously covered in past Legal Planet posts, in an outright assault on public health and the environment, the Trump Administration recently proposed rolling back national motor vehicle emission standards put in place by the Obama Administration. As part of this proposal, the Trump Administration also …
CONTINUE READINGLA’s Trying to Build Transit-Oriented Affordable Housing
But could we make it easier?
My colleague Jonathan Zasloff rightly points out that one way to harness the benefits of upzoning to alleviate our housing crisis is to promote inclusionary requirements for transit-oriented development. Los Angeles has adopted just such a program through its Transit-Oriented Communities ordinance, which I’ve written about here. Per the City of Los Angeles’ initial assessment, …
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CONTINUE READINGAfter Trump
Suppose we get a pro-climate-action unified government. What then?
Someday, the stars will surely come into alignment and Congress will be able to pass climate legislation. A national cap-and-trade scheme or a carbon tax would be definite possibilities. But let’s suppose they aren’t politically feasible, maybe because of opposition from progressive on equity grounds, or maybe because for some reason the public rejects them. …
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CONTINUE READINGThe Worst of a Bad Lot
They’re all bad, but this regulatory rollback effort stands out for sheer incompetence.
The Trump Administration has many energy and environmental initiatives, none of them good. But in terms of shoddy analysis and tenuous evidence, the worst is the Administration’s attempt to freeze fuel efficiency standards. For sheer lack of professionalism, the Administration’s cost-benefit analysis is hard to match. And you can’t even say that the Administration is …
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CONTINUE READINGWhat’s Wrong with Juliana (and What’s Right?)
The odds against the “children’s case” are bad and getting worse. But there’s a valid insight at its core.
Juliana v. United States, often called the “children’s case,” is an imaginative effort to make the federal government responsible for its role in promoting the production and use of fossil fuels and its failure to control carbon emissions. They ask the court to “declare the United States’ current environmental policy infringes their fundamental rights, direct the …
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CONTINUE READINGUsing Emergency Powers to Fight Climate Change
If Trump can stretch emergency powers, maybe they can be used for other purposes too.
Could a future President invoke emergency powers against climate change? Republicans are apparently worried that if Trump could use emergency powers by declaring border security a national emergency, the next president could do the same thing for climate change. There’s no doubt that this would be far more legitimate than Trump’s wall effort. Border crossings …
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