Posts tagged as:

environment

Land use regulations “seem to be the bane of their existence.” Shouldn’t they perhaps draw a wider lesson? [Prof. Bainbridge]

P.S. “Also their bane includes the estate tax and attempts in DC to repeal LIFO accounting” [@sggunase]

Back to the gravel walk? A new environmental program pressures populous Maryland counties to levy assessments on property owners based on their square footage of impervious surfaces such as roofs, patios or driveways that prevent rainwater from sinking into the soil [Blair Lee, Gazette; Maryland Reporter; Frederick News-Post; Anne Arundel County]

P.S. While some of the Maryland commentary has treated the idea as new and experimental, thanks to commenters for pointing out that it’s already a familiar part of the scene elsewhere.

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One of Lenore Skenazy’s readers, a kindergarten teacher in Wisconsin, says the list of things not allowed in the classroom without a Material Safety Data Sheet (MSDS) at her school includes dish soap and baby wipes [Free-Range Kids; MSDS for dish soap from lakeland.edu and for baby wipes from schoolhealth.com]

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Environment roundup

by Walter Olson on March 26, 2013

  • Doughnut oil and the environment: NYT misses a story of unintended consequences [Ira Stoll, SmarterTimes]
  • N.C.: “Guy Who Runs Wilderness Camp Told to Install Sprinklers, Use County Approved Lumber” [Katherine Mangu-Ward]
  • “With Proposed Policy Change, EPA Fully Embraces Role of ‘Environmental Justice’ Advocate” [Cory Andrews, WLF]
  • “While the taxes… are irritating, what has really killed my interest in expanding in California is the regulatory burden.” [Coyote on SLOLeaks blog; another California Coastal Commission horror story]
  • Natural crop breeding = safe, biotech-assisted breeding = unsafe? Tale of the toxic potato teaches otherwise [Maggie Koerth-Baker, BoingBoing] (broken link fixed now)
  • Peak Oil? Welcome instead to Trough Oil, as titanic new fossil fuel supplies begin coming online [Andrew Sullivan]
  • Deregulation of accessory dwellings is a reform both free-marketeers and New Urbanists in search of density can get behind [David Alpert, Greater Greater Washington]

OMG NYT OKs GMOs

by Walter Olson on March 25, 2013

“[T]here is no reliable evidence that genetically modified foods now on the market pose any risk to consumers,” says an editorial in, of all places, the New York Times. ["Why Label Genetically Engineered Food?"]

And while on the subject of publications outperforming expectations, Slate features a sober look at “cancer clusters,” with George Johnson reviewing a new book on the Toms River, N.J. episode.

Maryland roundup

by Walter Olson on March 20, 2013

  • Legislature won’t pass dram shop liability, lawyers ask Maryland high court to do so instead [Frederick News-Post]
  • In St. Mary’s County, new visitor rules for elementary schools ban hugging or giving homemade food to any but own kid [Southern Maryland News]
  • Progress: Maryland Senate votes to decriminalize small amounts of marijuana [NBC Washington]
  • If it’ll take $1 million for Somerset County (pop. 26,000) to cut stormwater nitrogen runoff by 145 pounds, how’s it going to manage to cut 37,000 pounds? [AP]
  • “Fracking Moratorium Falls One Vote Short of Passing Key Senate Committee” [Chestertown Spy] “Bill was more about preventing fracking than studying it.” [@ToddEberly]
  • Department of Truly Dreadful Ideas: Del. Ana Sol Gutierrez (D-Montgomery) continues to push bill to establish state-owned bank [Baltimore Business Journal]
  • Website attacking Montgomery County’s Valerie Ervin has some union fingerprints [WaPo] Sen. Brinkley blasts union bill to make all Md. teachers pay agency fees [Maryland Reporter]
  • Video interview with Hudson attorney George Ritchie on Waterkeeper v. Hudson Farm case [Center Maryland, earlier]
  • Added: “Md. Senate votes to outlaw smoking in cars with young children as passengers” [WaPo just now]

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A highly placed Democrat in Sacramento is acknowledging the problems with the state’s environmental-review law, which empowers complainants to stop, slow down or drive up the cost of new development projects. Among those who’ve learned to turn CEQA to their own uses: NIMBY-minded neighbors, business competitors seeking to hobble rivals, and unions looking for a shakedown tool. [Los Angeles Times]

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Environment roundup

by Walter Olson on March 1, 2013

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Report: Rockefeller family foundations have given millions to anti-fossil-fuel activist Bill McKibben [Vivian Krause, Financial Post (Canada)]

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“The Indianapolis Star reports that the Indiana Department of Natural Resources wants to prosecute Jeff and Jennifer Counceller for taking care of an injured deer that showed up on their doorstep.” [CBS Cleveland via Amy Alkon, Dan Mitchell] A while back I wrote about the case in which a Virginia family got in trouble with the feds after their 11-year-old rescued a baby woodpecker in their back yard and cared for it for a day or two before releasing it.

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Media coverage of a new Jonathan Klick-Joshua Wright study has focused mostly on the evidence that reusable grocery bags are high-bacteria environments and likely vectors for foodborne illness, but Robert Anderson notices another striking conclusion: “The authors estimate that the additional deaths from the plastic bag ban value each saved animal at $87,500.” That estimate includes only actual deaths from foodborne illness, and not the cost of nonfatal illnesses. [Witnesseth]

Roger Parloff at Fortune on eye-popping new allegations in a case we’ve been following for a long time (e.g.):

In Manhattan federal district court this morning, Chevron filed the declaration of a former Ecuadorian judge, Alberto Guerra, who describes how he and a second former judge, Nicolás Zambrano, allegedly allowed the plaintiffs lawyers to ghostwrite their entire 188-page, $18.2 billion judgment against Chevron [in the Lago Agrio environmental litigation] in exchange for a promise of $500,000 from the anticipated recovery.

The bribery charge is completely new, and the ghostwriting charge is more sweeping and better substantiated than before.

Since some readers may be having a hard time keeping all the case’s scandals straight, here’s a précis. Chevron has now presented evidence of two distinct, large-scale, ghostwriting frauds which, among other problems, it maintains, taint the Ecuadorian judgment.

Complicating Chevron’s claims of vindication — and opening an avenue for the plaintiff’s camp to argue against giving any credence to the new allegations — the oil company acknowledges that it has made and intends to go on making payments of “living expenses” to the former Ecuadorian judge, now resident with his family in the United States. Read the whole thing here.

More from Kevin Williamson at National Review Online:

Curious fact: As a senator, Barack Obama did see fit to intervene in the Chevron case — on the side of the Ecuadoran government. After meeting with an old basketball buddy — the abovementioned Mr. Donziger, who stands to make billions of dollars as the plaintiffs’ attorney in the case — Barack Obama wrote a letter to the U.S. trade representative arguing that Ecuador’s actions should not be held against the regime when negotiating trade privileges. Donziger, with the help of a $10,000-a-month lobbyist, also got Andrew Cuomo to threaten to intervene in the case, even though the jurisdiction of the Empire State stops well north of Ecuador.

Yet more: Daniel Fisher, Forbes.

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After a thorough scolding by the judge — to say nothing of some of us on the commentary side — the celebrity-friendly environmentalist group is cutting its losses. [DelmarvaNow] An official with the University of Maryland’s environmental law clinic defends the school’s stand here.

Environment roundup

by Walter Olson on January 17, 2013

Maryland law clinic follies

by Walter Olson on December 28, 2012

I’m in the Baltimore Sun with an op-ed about the University of Maryland’s ill-chosen decision to represent the Waterkeeper Alliance in what was intended to be a landmark environmental case against an Eastern Shore farm family. Earlier here, etc. (& welcome Glenn Reynolds/Instapundit readers)

P.S. Welcome listeners from Baltimore’s WBAL, which had me as a guest Friday afternoon to discuss the suit. Research assistance thanks to Ryan Mulvey, Cato intern.

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On Maryland’s Eastern Shore yesterday, federal judge William Nickerson ruled against a lawsuit alleging that Alan and Kristin Hudson’s family farm and Perdue Inc. violated the federal Clean Water Act. The plaintiffs, the Waterkeeper Alliance led by celebrity environmentalist Robert F. Kennedy Jr., had hoped to establish that big food processors, in this case Perdue, could be held liable for the purported pollution sins of “contract growers” like the Hudson family. Aside from its considerable factual weaknesses, for which the judge criticized the plaintiffs, the case had touched off a furor in Maryland because the University of Maryland law school’s environmental clinic had entered the lists on behalf of Waterkeeper and its long-shot theory; Democratic Gov. Martin O’Malley had sent a critical letter to the university saying it had contributed to an “injustice” against the Hudsons. The university law clinic says it’s reviewing the judge’s order in search of grounds for appeal. [Beth Moszkowicz/Daily Record, Charlene Sharpe/DelmarvaNow, MeatPoultry.com; earlier coverage, CBS Baltimore, Mark Newgent/Red Maryland; Maryland Coast Dispatch; pro-defense SaveFarmFamilies.org; legislative reaction, NLJ and more]

P.S. Don’t miss this from John Steele at Legal Ethics Forum, quoting the judge’s concluding paragraph:

The Court has no disagreement with Plaintiff that the Chesapeake Bay is an important and vital resource, that it is seriously impaired, and that the runoff from factory farms, including poultry operations, may play a significant role in that impairment. Nor does the Court disagree that citizen suits under the Clean Water Act can play a significant role in filling the void where state regulatory agencies are unable or unwilling to take appropriate legal action against offenders. When citizen groups take up that mantle, however, they must do so responsibly and effectively. The Court finds that in this action, for whatever reason, Waterkeeper did not meet that obligation.

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Environment roundup

by Walter Olson on November 30, 2012

  • As wildlife policy goes wrong, it’s guano on the rocks for La Jolla [Matt Welch, language]
  • Georgia-Pacific West vs. NEDC: “Millions of jobs at stake in logging case” [David Hampton, Wash. Times; Henry Miller, Forbes]
  • Ontario environment ministry won’t investigate complaint of noise from neighbor’s basketball play [National Post, earlier]
  • Maryland: Following state mandate, Howard County prepares to stifle farmland development without compensation [HoCoRising]
  • Role of local government structure: “New England vs. Midwest Culture” [George Mattei, Urbanophile]
  • More re: suits vs. utilities over Sandy outages [Bloomberg (Long Island), NJ.com] Pre-Sandy, NY pols kicked around Long Island Power Authority (LIPA) for decades [Nicole Gelinas/ NYP]
  • “Reckless Endangerment: Global Warming in the Courts” [Michael Greve, Liberty and Law] Various interest groups have already locked themselves into EPA’s jury-rigged scheme to limit carbon emissions [Greve]

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… you’ll probably want to start out as a young natural history collector. But is that still even legal? [Ann Althouse quoting Sir David Attenborough, Independent]