Legal Planet

MAY 19, 2023

Monterey County Oil Field (credit: Monterey County Weekly) For the first two decades of this century, and under the able leadership of former Chief Justices Ronald George and Tani Cantil-Sakauye, the California Supreme Court was quite active in interpreting and shaping California environmental law. Well, break’s over.

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Circle of Blue

OCTOBER 26, 2022

Groundwater regulation, legal rights to clean water, and spending measures highlight this election cycle. Weeks before the November 8 election, national political debate centers on control of Congress. Wilce is the treasurer of Arizona Water Defenders, the political action committee that brought the question to the ballot.

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Legal Planet

JANUARY 3, 2024

It seems likely that the conservative majority of the justices will erode or, perhaps, dramatically jettison longstanding principles of environmental law and policy in the coming months. An environmental law dispute to be sure, but relatively mundane stuff. .” Supreme Court has agreed to decide this year. Raimondo, No.

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Law and Environment

NOVEMBER 12, 2021

Earlier this week, Greenwire (subscription required) had an interesting story about the role that EPA’s estimate of the cost to comply with the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards rule played in the politics and judicial review of the rule. The post Will We Ever Stop Overestimating the Cost of Complying with Environmental Regulations?

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Regulations Politics Law Climate Change 244

Legal Planet

AUGUST 6, 2023

Last week, the California Supreme Court unanimously ruled that an initiative measure that would have imposed severe restrictions on oil and gas development in Monterey County is preempted by state law and therefore invalid. But the good news is that this goal can still be achieved through other legal and political strategies.

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Clean Energy Law

FEBRUARY 12, 2024

3] In the future, the Commission can introduce further repairability requirements for new products through the Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation. Next Steps Once the directive is adopted by the Council and Parliament and published in the EU Official Journal, Member States will have 24 months to transpose it into national law.

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Union of Concerned Scientists

OCTOBER 15, 2024

This, along with many other chemicals, like diesel particulates and ground-level ozone that form soot and smog, and metals like lead in paint and drinking water, are regulated by the EPA to keep us safe. Alarmingly, the notion of scientific integrity itself, which people from all political affiliations should support, is also under fire.

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Legal Planet

AUGUST 22, 2023

States and local air quality regulators have the legal authority to set particulate matter (PM), ozone, and nitrogen oxides (NOx) emissions standards and adopt regulations for these pollutants when they are already in attainment of the national ambient air quality standards ( NAAQS ) set by the U.S.

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New Scientist

SEPTEMBER 20, 2023

After years of political wrangling, wide-ranging online rules are about to become UK law - but complying with and enforcing the regulations won't be easy

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Law Politics Regulations 119

Legal Planet

OCTOBER 20, 2021

A big court ruling in California land-use law happened last month – and it has really large implications for the state’s efforts to address California’s housing crisis. Instead, I want to discuss the question of whether the state can even constrain local government regulation of land-use in California.

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Legal Planet

OCTOBER 21, 2024

UC Berkeley’s Center for Law, Energy, & Environment (CLEE) is sponsoring a series of papers evaluating aspects of Project 2025, The Heritage Foundation publication, entitled “Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise,” which has received attention in the Presidential election campaign. Political loyalists would take their place.

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Legal Planet

AUGUST 21, 2024

A decade ago, California stood out–and not in a good way–as the only Western state without comprehensive state laws monitoring and regulating groundwater pumping and use. In the fall of 2014, the Legislature enacted and Governor Brown signed into law the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA).

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Legal Planet

AUGUST 26, 2024

California regulators had an opportunity this year to be a global leader on requiring airplanes to use low-carbon jet fuel. But that is the whole point of this market-based program: regulated entities can either reduce the carbon in their products or pay someone else to do it. And in that absence, California has leeway to regulate.

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Inside Climate News

AUGUST 4, 2023

New research finds fracking-industry exemption for 28 chemicals otherwise regulated by federal law. By Jon Hurdle For almost 20 years, U.S.

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Regulations Law Fossil Fuels Politics 98

Legal Planet

SEPTEMBER 19, 2021

The California Legislature recently enacted, and Governor Gavin Newsom last week signed into law, two major housing reform measures. SB 9 and SB 10 represent California’s most transformative new housing laws in decades, and are a belated but welcome legislative response to the state’s longstanding housing crisis.

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Legal Planet

JUNE 14, 2024

That’s true for two reasons: first, the federal government plays only a modest role when it comes to administering and enforcing water rights laws. water rights administration is primarily the responsibility of state regulators, applying and enforcing state laws. That’s because across the U.S.,

Endangered Species Act 130

Endangered Species Act Law Politics Regulations 130

Legal Planet

OCTOBER 13, 2022

The article quotes a range of economists and other climate policy experts to the effect that subsidies and regulations are superior to carbon pricing because they can address equity issues, and that they can move investment in decarbonization technology more quickly than carbon pricing. Politics is central in policy.

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Legal Planet

JULY 12, 2024

In the first post, I argued that the new test applying to agency regulations uses different language but may not be dramatically different than Chevron in practice. That is based on a misunderstanding of how major regulations work these days. Presidents have greatly increased their control over agencies like EPA.

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Conservation Regulations Politics Law 221

PA Environment Daily

OCTOBER 12, 2024

Gene Yaw (R-Lycoming) announced plans to introduce legislation to prohibit municipalities from receiving Act 13 drilling impact fees if they set more protective standards on the development of natural gas than required in state or federal law and while a challenge to local restrictions is being litigated. Read more here. Read more here.

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Natural Gas Fossil Fuels Law 2019 109

Legal Planet

AUGUST 18, 2022

One option, a tax on carbon dioxide emissions, gets the most attention but seems politically impossible. The closest we’ve ever come to a carbon tax is a limited fee on methane emissions under the new IRA law. If a carbon tax were politically feasible, there would be a lot to be said in its favor.

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Environment, Law, and History

OCTOBER 6, 2020

A recurring theme in scholarship on environmental regulation is the roots of the American approach to environmental regulation , and to what extent this approach is exceptional. Two embedded, entwined, and exceptional American institutions—broad private property rights and competitive federalism—are necessary for explaining this shift.

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Law Climate Change Government Natural Resources 98

Enviromental Defense

MARCH 17, 2023

Late in the federal court hearings last week, in their lawsuit against plastics regulations , Big Plastic’s arguments went completely off the rails. It’s called the Precautionary Principle and it’s widely accepted in environmental law in Canada and well beyond. They say that federal regulation of plastics is merely political.

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Legal Planet

JUNE 20, 2022

Equity weighting can make a big difference in assessing regulations that heavily benefit disadvantaged communities. Equity weighting thus has the potential to make regulation much more progressive. Hence, the regulation is likely to be a bad deal for the poor unless the benefit to them is larger than the cost.

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Union of Concerned Scientists

FEBRUARY 29, 2024

Their omnipresent influence on national politics and international negotiations has trapped consumers in a fossil fuel-dependent system and threatens to delay climate action even further, with the most severe consequences for those already in the most vulnerable situations. What role does science play in climate advisory opinions?

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Climate Change Fossil Fuels Law Government 254

Legal Planet

FEBRUARY 20, 2023

Here’s an embarrassing confession: Though I had taught environmental law for 25 years at that point, I had never heard of section 111(d) until it was discussed as possible tool to limit carbon emissions. I would have voted to uphold the regulation as a reasonable if not necessary way to accomplish the statute’s purpose.

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Union of Concerned Scientists

JULY 9, 2024

If governments bypass or undermine science and public comments in policy making, our health could be in jeopardy from increased pollution, cases of foodborne illnesses, politically-driven medicine approvals or disapprovals, and more. When facilities emit less pollution, their regulations require less specific record-keeping and monitoring.

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Law and Environment

JUNE 16, 2021

The post TCI Update: Final Model Rule Addresses EJ, but Political Will May Be Lacking first appeared on Law and the Environment.

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Politics Carbon Emissions Clean Energy Greenhouse 130

Legal Planet

JANUARY 2, 2023

As a second benefit, they claim to be engaged in political symbolism, trying to disrupt a stuck debate over effective climate responses and get people to talk about solar geoengineering – of which stratospheric aerosol injection is the most promising method being discussed. This activity cannot have any significant global climate effect.

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Law Columbia

JUNE 22, 2022

On June 13, 2022, Chile published its Climate Change Framework Law (“the Climate Act”). Momentum created by this event created the perfect conditions and political will to move forward with an ambitious bill on Climate Change, submitted to Congress in January, 2020. By Robert Currie Ríos*. Conclusions.

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Union of Concerned Scientists

JULY 8, 2024

To be clear, under Chevron, judges were advised to defer to agency experts on technical issues if their interpretation of the law was, in a specific judge’s view, “reasonable.” That means virtually every regulation on private action intended to serve the public good will be delayed, delayed, and delayed. Deregulation successful!

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Environmental Protection Regulations Conservation Law 288

Union of Concerned Scientists

MAY 2, 2023

That was his way as a political leader: working tirelessly and proactively to make connections and fight to ensure everyone had the right to a safe and healthy environment. Polluters exert dominant influence in the current Congress, resulting in legislation like H.R.

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Air Pollution Clean Air Act Clean Water Act Fossil Fuels 354

Legal Planet

JULY 11, 2022

As we all know, the West Virginia case involved the Obama Administration’s signature climate change regulation, the Clean Power Plan. The Court rejected the regulation on the basis of the major questions doctrine. A: Roberts focuses on four factors in determining whether a regulation involves a major question. .

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Politics Regulations Law Climate Change 232

Legal Planet

OCTOBER 25, 2021

Cost-benefit analysis is required for all major regulations. A: A few laws explicitly require cost-benefit analysis or at least something along those lines. Those laws are a minority. Q: How does an agency determine the cost of a regulation? Economists as well as OIRA would count that as a benefit of the regulation.

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Carbon Monoxide Regulations Law Conservation 285

Legal Planet

MARCH 16, 2023

A special focus of the Commission’s deliberations will be whether and to what extent California’s most important and overarching environmental law is impeding efforts by the Legislature and Governor Newsom to address the state’s chronic and well-documented housing crisis. Enter CEQA.

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Politics Law Government Regulations 223

Legal Planet

OCTOBER 2, 2023

Climate law makes emission targets legally binding 2019. German parliament adopts a law to end coal use by 2038 at the latest. Amendments to the Climate Action Law are adopted, setting a binding 2045 date for carbon neutrality, with a 2031 target of a 65% emissions reduction compared with 1990. Renewables are 42% of electricity.

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Legal Planet

NOVEMBER 2, 2023

So too have the overpumped groundwater aquifers in California’s San Joaquin and Salinas Valleys that belatedly prompted state political leaders to enact California’s first-ever groundwater regulatory program in 2014. aquifers.

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Fossil Fuels Climate Change Greenhouse Regulations 237

Union of Concerned Scientists

APRIL 16, 2024

Texas went first in 2005, with a law called SB 20. The law authorized the creation of new transmission to serve “renewable energy zones” and a process to identify and select such zones. Nevada adopted a law called SB 448 in 2021, directing utilities to build transmission that meets state goals.

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