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Recentering Environmental Law: A Thought Experiment

Legal Planet

How would environmental law look different and how might we be thinking about it differently? First of all, we would have had a very different understanding of the air pollution problem. We thought that the key to reducing air pollution was to require better pollution control devices. Download as PDF

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Making Fossil Fuels Pay for Their Damage

Legal Planet

Production and combustion of fossil fuels imposes enormous costs on society, which the industry doesn’t pay for. The closest we’ve ever come to a carbon tax is a limited fee on methane emissions under the new IRA law. A more promising alternative might be a clean-up tax on the fossil fuel industry.

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Centering Public Health at the UN Climate Talks

Legal Planet

Air pollution is harmful to human health as it exacerbates and causes an increase in health issues, like respiratory illnesses. The poor air quality—juxtaposed with the COP28 climate negotiations underway—made the need for action abundantly clear. I attended the climate conference as part of the UCLA Law delegation.

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How Will EPA’s Proposed Power Plant Carbon Rule Impact Public Health?

Union of Concerned Scientists

The power sector is the second highest source of climate pollution in the U.S. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recently published a proposed rule which would limit carbon pollution from fossil fuel burning power plants, a move which is critically important, statutorily required, and long overdue.

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Industry’s Tactics to Expose You to More Soot Pollution

Union of Concerned Scientists

Among the commenters was my colleague Sam Wilson , who passionately and effectively called on the EPA to follow the science and enact the strongest air pollution standards to protect people’s health. pollution, half of the deaths are attributable to the burning of fossil fuels. EPA’s PM 2.5 EPA’s PM 2.5

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LA’s big step toward building electrification

Legal Planet

This means that, with few exceptions, new buildings will need to exclusively use electric appliances, and will not be allowed to contain any fossil-fuel infrastructure, like natural-gas lines. All-electric as the new normal. Just as important is the process that led to the new-buildings ordinance.

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Ask a Scientist: Gas Plants Disproportionately Harm Marginalized Communities

Union of Concerned Scientists

Municipal zoning laws, meanwhile, allowed companies to build power plants and other industrial facilities in those same neighborhoods. First, there’s air pollution. Gas plants and infrastructure emit nitrogen oxides (NOx) during combustion, which degrade local air quality.