Does a decline in crop diversity threaten future food production? A report in the August 2011 National Geographic suggests so. The article, “Food Ark,” reports that the “extinction” of food varieties could be a real problem. Food varieties extinction is happening all over the world—and it’s happening fast. In the United States an estimated 90 […]
Archive | Environment
Considering the Costs of Climate Adaptation
Yesterday afternoon I attended a lecture by Michael Greenstone, the 3M Professor of Environmental Economics and former chief economist of the Council of Economic Advisers during the first year of the Obama Administration, addressing the question, “Will Adaptation Save Us from Climate Change?” This lecture was the keynote address at a PERC workshop on “Human […]
Failing to Save the Spotted Owl
James L. Huffman, former Dean of the Lewis & Clark Law School, examines the federal government’s flagging efforts to save the endangered spotted owl in the Pacific Northwest. Despite a 90% cutback in harvesting on federal lands (which constitute 46% of Oregon and Washington combined), the population of spotted owls continues to decline, as do […]
Climate Change, Cultural Perception, and Scientific Literacy
Yale’s Cultural Cognition Project, led by Dan Kahan, has a new working paper examining public perception of the risks posed by climate change: “The Tragedy of the Risk-Perception Commons: Culture Conflict, Rationality Conflict, and Climate Change.” The results are interesting, and perhaps a bit counter-intuitive — particularly the finding that those who are more scientifically […]
District Court Upholds Polar Bear Listing
Yesterday, the federal district court in D.C. upheld the federal government’s decision to list polar bears as “threatened” under the Endangered Species Act against challenges from all sides. Environmentalist organizations argued the government should have instead listed the polar bear as “endangered” (a more protected status), while Alaska and industry groups argued the polar bear […]
Court to Consider Administrative Compliance Orders
The Supreme Court accepted cert on two more cases on Tuesday. One of these cases, Sackett v. EPA, could be quite significant for administrative law. The case arises out of an all-too-typical wetlands regulation dispute. The Sacketts own a lot in a residential subdivision upon which they planned to build a home. After they graded […]
An Environmental Grant
Most eyes have focused on the Supreme Court’s recent decisions in Wal-Mart v. Dukes and AEP v. Connecticut. Yet the Court has also continued to grant additional cases for next term. Among Monday’s grants was PPL Montana PLC v. Montana, the first (and thus far only) environmental case on the docket for OT 2011. It’s […]
Supreme Court Unanimous that Clean Air Act Displaces Climate Suits
Today the U.S. Supreme Court held unanimously in American Electric Power v. Connecticut that the Clean Air Act displaces suits alleging global warming constitutes a public nuisance under federal common law. As I’ve discussed before (see posts here, here and here), this conclusion was hard to avoid once the Supreme Court held (erroneously in my […]
Ethanol Subsidies Survive
Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) forced a vote on eliminating an excise tax credit for ethanol. Something like this should be a no-brainer. Tax subsidies for ethanol are economically wasteful and environmentally destructive. Yet the vote failed, 59-40. This could have been a tough vote for Republicans, as some conservatives consider the repeal of tax credits […]
Renewable Energy Sprawl
A new California law mandate that one-third of the state’s electricity come from “renewable” sources by 2020. What will this mean in practice? Robert Bryce explored some of the numbers in an NYT op-ed last week. The state’s peak electricity demand is about 52,000 megawatts. Meeting the one-third target will require (if you oversimplify a […]
Plastic Bag Makers Sue ChicoBag for Exaggerating Environmental Claims
Several manufacturers of disposable plastic bags have filed suit against reusable bag maker ChicoBag for false and misleading claims about the environmental superiority of its reusable bags over disposable bags. The complaint claims that ChicoBag’s advertising and promotional materials violate the federal Lanham Act and the South Carolina Unfair Trade Practices Act. According to the […]
Don’t Blame EPA for What the Clean Air Act Requires
By Jonathan H. Adler on June 4, 2011 5:37 pm in Climate Change, Congress, Environment, Regulation, Uncategorized
At a recent press conference touting House GOP plans to reduce regulatory burdens on business, members of Congress expressed dismay that the Environmental Protection Agency may tighten the National Ambient Air Quality Standard for ozone (aka urban smog) without considering the economic costs. Rep. Vicki Hartzler (R-Mo) remarked: I received this week a letter from […]
How the Precautionary Principle Refutes Itself
I share much of co-blogger Jonathan Adler’s skepticism about the precautionary principle. If consistently applied, the principle actually counsels against its own adoption. As usually defined by its proponents, the precautionary principle states that: When an activity raises threats of harm to human health or the environment, precautionary measures should be taken even if some […]
The Problems with Precaution
The American has posted an essay of mine on the precautionary principle, “The Problems with Precaution: A Principle without Principle.” The underlying paper was prepared for a conference on pesticide regulation at the American Enterprise Institute and was included in an AEI book, Crop Chemophobia: Will Precaution Kill the Green Revolution?. The essay begins: It’s […]
NY Files Fracking Lawsuit
New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman filed suit against several federal agencies yesterday for failing to prepare an environmental impact statement under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) before adoptingDelaware River Basin Commission regulations governing hydraulic fracturing in the Delaware River Basin.Commission (“DRBC”) regulations that would authorize natural gas development within the Delaware River Basin. […]