Following up on my post from earlier today, here is some more commentary on the Supreme Court’s decision to accept cert in American Electric Power v. Connecticut. Douglas Kysar (Yale), ACSBlog Jonathan Zasloff (UCLA), Legal Planet And here is news coverage from the WSJ and Greenwire. UPDATE: More from NRDC’s Swithcboard and the Center for […]
Archive | Climate Change
Global Warming Goes Back to Court
This morning the Supreme Court accepted certiorari in American Electric Power v. Connecticut, a case in which several states and environmental groups alleged that greenhouse gas emissions from several large utilities constitute actionable contributions to the public nuisance of global warming. This case has potentially broad implications for continuing climate change litigation in federal courts […]
Cancun and Copenhagen, and Carbon as Pure Regulatory Object
By Kenneth Anderson on November 29, 2010 11:05 am in Climate Change, Collective Action Problems, Economy, Environment, International Law
Co-Conspirator Jonathan has already remarked below on the seeming collapse of the media-academic-NGO-international organization-et al. global warming coalition in-between last year’s Copenhagen meeting and this year’s much-subdued Cancun event. I broadly agree with Jonathan, and with Margaret Wente, on whom he comments, on the policy merits. I also think the right approach to climate change […]
Gates v. Ridley on Progress, the Plight of Africa, and Climate Change
Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates reviews Matt Ridley’s The Rational Optimist in the Wall Street Journal. Gates is quite favorable. He endorses Ridley’s overall thesis, but thinks Ridley is too dismissive of some current problems, including underdevelopment in Africa and climate change. Having shown that many past fears were ultimately unjustified, Mr. Ridley finally turns his […]
How Progressives Misunderstand Much Conservative Skepticism of Climate Policy
By Jonathan H. Adler on November 8, 2010 6:51 pm in Climate Change, Conservatism, Environment, Uncategorized
In yesterday’s Washington Post, Bracken Hendricks of the Center for American Progress laments widespread conservative opposition to “government action on climate change.” Responding to the threat posed by global warming should be a conservative cause, Hendricks argues, because a warmer world will breed bigger government. Many conservatives say they oppose clean-energy policies because they want […]
Heinzerling Back to Georgetown
Professor Lisa Heinzerling will be leaving her post as Assistant Administrator for the Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Policy, Economics, and Innovation at the end of the year and returning to the Georgetown University Law Center, Politico reports. Heinzerling has been very active in pushing the EPA to move aggressively to regulate greenhouse gases under […]
Global Geoengineering Moratorium
Last week, delegates from 193 nations agreed to a moratorium on geoengineering at the tenth conference of the parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity in Nagoya, Japan. Specifically, the parties agreed that all parties should: Ensure . . . , in the absence of science based, global, transparent and effective control and regulatory mechanisms […]
Climate Policy Without Cap and Trade
This week, environmental analysts from left and right came together to offer a “post-partisan” approach to climate change. In Post-Partisan Power: How a Limited and Direct Approach to Energy Innovation Can Deliver Cheap Energy, Economic Productivity, and National Prosperity, Steven Hayward (American Enterprise Institute), Mark Muro (Brookings Institution), and Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger (Breakthrough […]
The Sorry Green Giant
This morning I had an essay on NRO discussing the state of the environmentalist movement in light of the failure to enact significant climate legislation. I’m currently in Emigrant, Montana, attending a conference co-sponsored by Liberty Fund and PERC on “Liberty and the Progress of the Human Condition,” so I may not be able to respond much […]
No Lomborg U-Turn on Climate
You read it here first, but in case there was any doubt, “skeptical environmentalist” Bjorn Lomborg appears in today’s WSJ explaining that he has not altered his views on the existence of climate change or whether it poses a serious environmental problem.
Time to Reform the IPCC
By Jonathan H. Adler on August 31, 2010 10:40 am in Climate Change, Environment, Politicizing Science
Yesterday the Inter-Academy Council, a consortium of the world’s leading national academies of science, issued a report highly critical of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). (Full report here.) The report does not challenge the IPCC’s central findings about the science of climate change, but strongly criticizes the IPCC’s procedures and management structure, […]
A Lomborg About-Face on Warming?
The Guardian reports on an “apparent U-turn” by Bjorn Lomborg, the “skeptical environmentalist,” on the issue of global climate change. (See also here.) The stories report that Lomborg has a new book, due out this fall, in which he calls global warming “one of the chief concerns facing the world today” and urges adoption of […]
Writ of Mandamus Sought in Comer v. Murphy Oil
It’s a big week for climate change litigation. In addition to the SG filing I noted below, the plaintiffs in Comer v. Murphy Oil, a public nuisance suit against multiple energy companies, have filed a petition for a writ of mandamus with the Supreme Court in an effort to revive their litigation. It’s an interesting […]
The SG’s Brief in American Electric Power v. Connecticut
The environmental law community is buzzing over a brief filed by the Solicitor General’s Office this week on behalf of the Tennessee Valley Authority in American Electric Power v. Connecticut. As reported by the Washington Post, the WSJ‘s Washington Wire, and Greenwire, environmentalist groups are shocked and dismayed by the SG’s decision to enter the […]
EPA Rejects Reconsideration of Endangerment Finding
Yesterday, the Environmental Protection Agency denied ten petitions seeking reconsideration of its December 2009 finding that emissions of greenhouse gases cause or contribute to air pollution that can be reasonably anticipated to endanger human health or welfare. (Hat tip: Legal Planet) This so-called “endangerment finding” is the trigger for the regulation of greenhouse gases under […]