Legal Planet

MAY 7, 2025

Energy affordability has been a huge focus in Sacramento as the deadline nears for bills to move out of policy committees. Over the past three years, customers of the largest investor-owned electric utilities (IOUs) in the state have seen their rates rise by an average of 5-41%, with nearly one in five households behind on their electricity bills. Over the past couple of years, policymakers have written reports, held hearings, and committed to the goal of reducing energy burden on California hou

Clean Energy

Legal Planet

MARCH 6, 2025

A mans assets are only 0.2% of U.S. wealth. A regulation costs only 0.004% of U.S. GDP per year. A disease kills 0.1% of the population annually. That all sounds pretty minor, doesnt it? But . The man – Elon Musk is worth over $246 billion. The regulation costs a billion dollars per year. The disease breast cancer kills 42,000 American per year.

Carbon Emissions

Legal Planet

FEBRUARY 24, 2025

The California Senate just took a critical step toward confronting unhealthy air quality in environmental justice communities through the introduction of a new Senate Bill 526. This proposed legislation aims to curb dangerous dust emissions from aggregate facilities in the South Coast Air Basin, where industrial pollution has long threatened public health and the environment.

Recycling

Legal Planet

DECEMBER 2, 2024

It’s a common misconception that Congress has never passed any climate change legislation. True, Congress hasn’t passed the comprehensive emission limits that many of us would like to see. But it has passed laws regulating two powerful greenhouse gases, and some other climate laws stretching back over the past five decades. The story begins under President Nixon and extends through the Biden years.

Law

Legal Planet

OCTOBER 24, 2024

The Project 2025 report is 920 pages long, but only a few portions have gotten much public attention. The report’s significance is precisely that it goes beyond a few headline proposals to set a comprehensive agenda for a second Trump Administration. There are dozens of significant proposals relating to energy and the environment. Although I can’t talk about all of them here, I want to flag a few of these sleeper provisions.

2025

Legal Planet

OCTOBER 14, 2024

West of Sydney, Australia, lies the Blue Mountains, a range of plateaus and panoramic canyons forested with eucalyptus trees. Oil in the leaves produces a bluish haze, hence the name of the area. Twenty-five years ago, in 1999, a new NGO called Forest Trends brought together a small international group to the town of Katoomba to brainstorm over increasing capital flows to protect nature, how to “make trees worth more standing than cut down.

Deforestation

Legal Planet

MAY 20, 2025

When the annual U.N. climate conference descends on the small Brazilian rainforest city of Belm in November 2025, it will be tempting to focus on the drama and disunity among major nations. Only 21 countries had even submitted their updated plans for managing climate change by the 2025 deadline required under the Paris Agreement. The U.S. is pulling out of the agreement altogether.

Rainforest

Legal Planet

APRIL 24, 2025

It’s a tribute to the significance of state climate policies that Trump devoted an entire executive order to excoriating them as “fundamentally irreconcilable” with his own, fossil-fuel promoting, energy policy. Yet, despite all the drama in D.C., state governments have continued to make quiet progress in their efforts to expand clean energy and phase out fossil fuels.

Fossil Fuels

Legal Planet

APRIL 21, 2025

The Trump Administration is about to embark on overruling a key regulation protecting endangered species. That regulation, which the Supreme Court upheld in the Sweet Home case (1995), protects members of endangered species from being killed or injured indirectly via destruction of their habitat. The Administration does not see Sweet Home as a barrier, because that case applied the Chevron doctrine in reaching its result.

Clean Air Act

Legal Planet

APRIL 21, 2025

Trump is a bump. A nasty one, but a bump nonetheless, because the world is on the road to zero-emission fuels and vehicles no matter what. That was one takeaway from Charging Ahead, the UCLA Emmett Institutes annual symposium held on April 9 devoted this year to cutting vehicle pollution during the next four years and beyond. Another overarching idea: states like California and cities like Los Angeles have a lot of tools it’s time to break them out.

Law

Legal Planet

APRIL 14, 2025

The fires in L.A. have put litigation over wildfires on the front page and spotlighted Californias unique approach. But such litigation isnt new. In 2019, Pacific Gas & Electric filed for bankruptcy because of billions of dollars of potential liability from fires the previous summer. The firm was faced with 750 lawsuits, ultimately entering a $13.5 billion settlement.

Government

Legal Planet

MARCH 3, 2025

The dramatic increase in extreme weather events has been wreaking havoc on states across the country, from devastating fires, floods, and droughts to rising sea levels. As a member of the Board for the American Red Cross Pacific Coast Region, I have seen firsthand how the organization is responding to twice as many climate-related disasters as we were just a decade ago.

Fossil Fuels

Legal Planet

FEBRUARY 24, 2025

The Trump Administration has asked Congress to kill Californias current clean car and truck regulations. The process is a bit circuitous. Congress wouldnt directly overturn the California regulations. Instead, Congress would overturn an EPA order that waives federal preemption of EPAs regulations. The problem is that the statute which authorizes this kind of congressional action does not apply here.

Clean Air Act

Legal Planet

NOVEMBER 6, 2024

We are about to have in the White House a man who thinks solar panels kill bunnies, and windmills cause cancer – a man who rolled back over a hundred environmental regulations in his first term of office. This a dreadful setback that could not have come at a worse time. The climate and biodiversity crises are becoming more urgent by the day. But we’ve been here before, and we know what needs to be done.

Politics

Legal Planet

MAY 23, 2025

Well, how shocking. Not : “While much of the country is being crushed by a housing affordability crisis, living in Austin, Texas, is becoming cheaper as rent prices in the city are dropping faster than anywhere else in the nation.” And why, pray tell? “Over the past few years, Austin built more new apartments than any other city in the country and even in Texas, which together with Florida approved the most new building development projects in the union since the COVID pandemic

Government

Legal Planet

MAY 5, 2025

One of the 76 gas signs at Dodger Stadium. Photo: Emmett Institute The Los Angeles Dodgers have all but ignored the growing calls from fans, activists, columnists, researchers, and a state lawmaker asking the team to cut ties with Big Oil and remove the two huge, orange 76 gas ads that dominate the clubs picturesque scoreboards. But the teams streak may be coming to an end: They can’t ignore the International Olympic Committee.

2028

Legal Planet

MAY 1, 2025

Are environmental regulations destroying jobs and crippling the economy? On March 12, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin announced on X that: @EPA is initiating 31 historic actions to Power the Great American Comeback in the greatest day of deregulation in American history! (EPA listed only 22, math not being a Trump Administration strongpoint,) In the attached video, Zeldin exulted that EPA will be reconsidering many suffocating rules that restrict nearly every sector of our economy and cost American

Regulations

Legal Planet

APRIL 25, 2025

Nearly four decades ago, New York Times columnist Flora Lewis penned a piece, entitled Worthwhile Canadian Initiative, that became infamous in journalistic lore: The New Republic crowned it as the Worlds Most Boring Headline because all three words were extremely boring. No more. Donald Trumps demented economic war against Americas largest trading partner, and his even more deranged desire to turn a sovereign nation into the 51 st state, has driven the economy and foreign policy into crisis, for

Climate Change

Legal Planet

APRIL 24, 2025

We dont have to tell you that air pollution remains a serious threat to communities across California, from Oakland to the Inland Empire. But what if we told you that most air regulators are fighting air pollution with one hand tied behind their back, unnecessarily? It turns out there is a powerful weapon that can clean up the air that you and your family breathe, but only two of Californias 35 local air districts are using it.

Air Pollution

Legal Planet

APRIL 11, 2025

On Tuesday, the White House released an Executive Order titled Protecting American Energy from State Overreach. It is unclear what the order believes is in need of protection, but it is certainly not the near-term health of our lungs or the long-term livability of our communities. What is clear, fortunately, is that there is little to no legal or constitutional overreach in the state climate programs it purports to target.

Law

Legal Planet

APRIL 9, 2025

Graphic: Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego Teaching the climate change unit last week in my International Environmental Law and Policy class, I found myself so moved that I started crying at the board. My poor students thought I was in distress.I was simply telling the story of the Keeling Curve.Thats a daily record of global atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration devised by Charles Keeling and taken from the Mauna Loa Observatory on Hawaii every day starting in 1958.

Carbon Dioxide

Legal Planet

MARCH 27, 2025

Back in 2012, CLEE and the Emmett Institute released a report called Electric Drive by 25, with the relatively bold subtitle How California Can Catalyze Mass Adoption of Electric Vehicles by 2025. The report cited 2011-12 EV sales as reason for optimism on achieving mass adoption by 2025: Early results from the introduction of new electric vehicles to the U.S. market have been promising, with sales of both Nissan LEAFs and Chevy Volts outselling the popular hybrid Toyota Prius in its first yea

2012

Legal Planet

FEBRUARY 19, 2025

On the morning of Feb. 18, 2015, pent-up gases at ExxonMobils refinery in Torrance triggered an explosion so powerful it registered as a magnitude 1.7 earthquake and sent industrial ash over entire neighborhoods. Its been called the near-miss disaster that most people have never heard of. But that near miss is raising new calls to ban a toxic chemical that is still used in Torrance to this day.

2015

Legal Planet

FEBRUARY 4, 2025

The Environment and Natural Resources Division (ENRD) of the Department of Justice faces its most profound crisis since it was established in 1909. In a little over a week, the Trump administration has (1) reassigned four career managers (leading nearly half of ENRDs sections) to the newly formed Office of Sanctuary Cities Enforcement; (2) placed career attorneys working in ENRDs Office of Environmental Justice on administrative leave; (3) suspended the nearly 75-year-old Honors Program for entr

Natural Resources

Legal Planet

JANUARY 30, 2025

Nearly half of U.S. states, with more than half the U.S. population, have made climate pledges. Trumps election is a body blow to U.S. climate policy, but there are ways that those states can fight Trump and, importantluy, also move forward on their own plans. Ive posted a new paper on states as havens for climate policy. The paper goes into a lot more detail about the strategies and legal issues.

Clean Energy

Legal Planet

NOVEMBER 27, 2024

A giant, fake beached whale reeking with the stench of rotten fish served as public art commentary in Baku. Photo: Cara Horowitz Some have described the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP29) in Baku as “challenging,” “ineffective,” and “disappointing.” On the one hand, global greenhouse gas emissions have reached an all-time high, and the temperature for 2023 is the highest ever recorded.

Paris Agreement

Legal Planet

NOVEMBER 12, 2024

During the last Trump administration, California emerged as a serious counterweight to federal government backsliding on climate and the environment, and last week, some California lawmakers publicly recommitted to resisting future Trump administration efforts to reduce environmental and climate protections. On November 7, Governor Newsom issued a proclamation calling the Legislature into a special session (the second in the past three months!

Government

Legal Planet

NOVEMBER 7, 2024

This is the second in a series of posts on CLEE’s new set of resources on Equitable Climate Infrastructure Investment. The national EV market could grow nearly tenfold by 2030. Many state vehicle emissions standards (led by California) are driving a transition to zero-emission vehicles over the coming decade, and state, federal, and private sector dollars are increasingly flowing into EV infrastructure across the U.S.

Government

Legal Planet

NOVEMBER 4, 2024

On November 8, the California Air Resources Board, or CARB, is slated to consider approving amendments to California’s Low Carbon Fuel Standard. The program has been so successful in replacing high carbon petroleum-based fuels with lower emissions vehicle fuels that interest groups from all sides of the political spectrum have come forward to demand radical changes that they argue will fix problems.

Air Pollution

Legal Planet

JULY 23, 2025

The International Energy Agency’s 2025 review isn’t likely to make the bestseller list. But there’s some eye-opening information. We can lose sight of global trends because of our understandable preoccupation with our own situation. Not that U.S. trends are unimportant, mind you, but they’re not the whole ball game. The big takeaway globally is that oil and coal are basically static, and natural gas is growing slowly.

Fossil Fuels

Legal Planet

MAY 23, 2025

Climate and ecological challenges are fundamentally linked, demanding solutions that address both environmental and social issues. Multibenefit projectslike levee realignments that reconnect floodplainscan combine climate adaptation, water management and ecosystem restoration efforts. However, most funding programs focus on single-purpose projects, making it difficult to support multibenefit solutions.

2025

Legal Planet

MAY 14, 2025

The Department of Energy is proposing to rescind key energy efficiency requirements. It is beyond ironic that this is happening at a time when the President has proclaimed an energy emergency. Trump says the grid is struggling desperately to meet surging power demand. Thats a strange time to eliminate regulations that are saving energy. DOEs action is also illegal, because the law in question has a provision prohibiting rollbacks.

Law

Legal Planet

MAY 9, 2025

About a week ago I got an email from McGill University’s Juan Serpa , asking me to join a new platform — the Sustainability Academic Network (SUSAN) — that contains literally thousands of datasets, academic papers, conferences, jobs, grants, local events, and institutes all devoted to sustainability. Great. Happy to do it (especially since they found me through Legal Planet).

2025

Legal Planet

MARCH 31, 2025

Business investment decisions rely on stability. And stability is in short supply so far in this Trump administration. Instead, weve seen an erratic blitzkrieg of activity on tariffs, federal funding, and deregulation that has spooked all sorts of industries. Thats partly why Heatmap News has declared Trump Degrowth Donald, and why my Legal Planet colleague Jonathan Zasloff has cheered the tariffs as a stupid but potentially effective way to reduce emissions.

Clean Energy

Legal Planet

MARCH 31, 2025

(Klamath River Dam removal project [credit: Los Angeles Times]) Most of the environmental law and policy matters discussed on Legal Planet–especially over the past few months–have dealt with natural resource crises, environmental rollbacks, hostile political actors and actions in Washington, D.C., etc. So let me take this opportunity to share an upbeat and inspirational environmental story in these otherwise troubled environmental times.

Law

Legal Planet

MARCH 25, 2025

Ive written about debates over permitting reform and other versions of regulatory streamlining to support the development of infrastructure that we need to address climate change. Another view, well articulated by Nicholas Bagley at University of Michigan , is that the problem is more fundamental: Excessive focus on governmental procedures and process, reinforced by searching judicial review, has paralyzed government and therefore undermined achieving a range of goals including more housing, mor

Government

Legal Planet

MARCH 17, 2025

In late 2009, EPA made a formal finding often called the Endangerment Finding that greenhouse gases may endanger human health and welfare. Undaunted by the overwhelming scientific evidence in favor of that finding, the Trump EPA plans to reconsider it. Few independent observers believe EPA will succeed, but the issues are important enough to warrant a close look.

Clean Air Act