Under an environmentalist banner, the city of Los Angeles plans a scheme to wipe family-owned trash haulers and replace them with unionized monopoly providers [L.A. Times, Scott Shackford/Reason]
Posts Tagged ‘environment’
Environmental roundup
- Oklahoma attorney general goes to court claiming private litigant manipulation of endangered/threatened species petition process [Lowell Rothschild & Kevin Ewing; NPR “State Impact”; Oklahoman, auto-plays ad video; press release, Oklahoma AG E. Scott Pruitt; ESA Watch site from oil riggers; more on the topic]
- New Yorker mag backs tale of frogs/atrazine researcher who claims conspiracy. Someone’s gonna wind up embarrassed [Jon Entine]
- Does gas company lease of subsurface rights entitle it to seek injunction excluding protesters from ground level? [Paul Alan Levy]
- California: “Abusive Coastal Agency Demands Even More Power” [Steven Greenhut]
- Mr. Harris, you embarrass: “recreational burning of wood is unethical and should be illegal” [Sam Harris from 2012]
- Harrisburg Patriot-News series on flood insurance [TortsProf, R Street Institute on recent bill]
- Kansas, Louisiana, and Indiana named top states on property rights freedoms [Mercatus]
Environmental roundup
- Environmental advocates and their fans in the press come off badly in Chevron/Ecuador litigation scandal [Coyote, earlier]
- Drought disaster unfolds in California’s Central Valley, where project water is allocated by fiat, not bid for in market [Allysia Finley, WSJ; San Jose Mercury-News]
- Other large democracies resist the idea of packing environmental terms into trade treaties, and maybe they’re right [Simon Lester, Cato]
- “A Tough Day in Court for the EPA’s Greenhouse Gas Regulations” [Andrew Grossman]
- R.I.P. leading environmental law professor Joseph Sax [NYT, I discussed his work in Schools for Misrule]
- Lawyers have hijacked Endangered Species Act [Congressional Working Group report via Washington Examiner editorial]
- When science begins bringing extinct animals back to life, watch for unintended legal consequences [Tyler Cowen]
Derek Lowe on the West Virginia chemical spill
Last month Charleston, W.V. suffered one of the worst American environmental calamities in years when coal-scrubbing chemicals burst from a tank farm and into its water supply, which had to be shut down for several days. So, you ask, given a great big injury for which it’s extremely likely that someone bears legal responsibility, how’s the litigation system helping out? Well, the operator of the tank farm having almost immediately declared bankruptcy in anticipation of massive legal claims, the net is naturally being cast wide for other defendants to sue, with some suits, for example, naming the water company as sole defendant.
According to Derek Lowe (crediting ChemJobber), one law firm’s suit drops the ball on identifying the exact chemical nature of the contaminant 4-MCHM, or (4-methylcyclohexane)methanol:
The court filing, by the law firm of Thompson and Barney, says explicitly:
30. The combination chemical 4-MCHM is artificially created by combining methylclyclohexane (sic) with methanol.
31. Two component parts of 4-MCHM are methylcyclohexane and methanol which are both known dangerous and toxic chemicals that can cause latent dread disease such as cancer.
Sure thing, guys, just like the two component parts of dogwood trees are dogs and wood.
Lowe also accuses an expert hired by the same law firm of “irresponsible fear-mongering” for encouraging alarm about a finding of just over 30 nanograms per milliliter of formaldehyde in the Charleston water, not a high level by many standards.
Environmental roundup
- Behind costly EPA crackdown on wood-burning stoves, a whiff of sweetheart lawsuits? [Larry Bell]
- Reminder: California’s Prop 65 doesn’t actually improve public health, makes lawyers rich, and harasses business [Michael Marlow, WSJ]
- “What I learned from six months of GMO research: None of it matters” [Nathanael Johnson, Grist]
- Eminent domain threatens store owner in Fire Island’s Saltaire [NYP]
- In case you haven’t seen this one: chemical content of all-natural foods [James Kennedy Monash]
- “The court ordered that the county pay the turtles’ attorneys fees.” [Dan Lewis, Now I Know]
- “On the government’s books, the switch [from steel to aluminum in Ford’s new F-150 pickup] is a winner because MPG goes up.” [William Baldwin, Forbes]
Environmental roundup
- “A Milestone to Celebrate: I Have Closed All My Businesses in Ventura County, California” [Coyote, earlier]
- “Louisiana Judge Ends Katrina Flooding Lawsuits Against Feds” [AP/Insurance Journal]
- “Some shoppers who reuse plastic bags to dispose of animal waste will miss them” [L.A. Times via Alkon]
- Alameda County, Calif. conscripts out-of-state drugmakers into product disposal program: public choice problem, constitutionality problem or both? [Glenn Lammi, WLF]
- “Connecticut, Drunk on Power, Uses Bottle Bill to Steal Money” [Ilya Shapiro]
- “If successful, the New York lawsuits would extend the scope of the [habeas corpus] writ to an undefined array of nonhuman creatures.” [Jim Huffman, Daily Caller]
- Clean Water Act citizen suits never intended to be race to courthouse between officialdom, bounty hunters [Lammi, WLF on Eleventh Circuit ruling]
- Let’s stop measuring congestion, it just makes our environmental plans look bad [Randal O’Toole, David Henderson on California policy]
“Industry, not environmentalists, killed traditional bulbs”
The disappearance of the cheap, popular incandescent bulb “has become a fitting symbol for the collusion of big business and big government…. the market didn’t kill the traditional [low-profit-margin] light bulb. Government did it, at the request of big business.” [Tim Carney]
Great moments in NIMBY-ism
A group in Iceland has sued to block construction of highway arguing (among other things) that it would disturb the ancient elves or “hidden folk” of the Icelandic countryside. “The group also claims the area the new highway would run through is of particular importance because it contains an elf church. A 2007 survey by the University of Iceland found that while only 8 percent of the population believe in elves, 54 percent would not actually deny their existence.” [PBS]
Environmental roundup
- Did we all make the wrong career choice by not becoming environmental law specialists at the University of Maryland School of Law? [@VinumLex]
- “EPA preparing to unleash a deluge of new regulations” [Michael Bastasch, Daily Caller]
- “The state of humanity is improving. Fast. Let us show you the evidence.” [New HumanProgress.org website from Cato, related essay and Twitter account]
- Long-running eminent domain suit over Centralia, Pa. mine fire settles [AP]
- Federal agencies’ entry into consent decrees with enviro groups (“sue and settle” in Chamber’s terminology) ties up more land than ever [Stephen Moore, WSJ]
- San Diego, L.A., Austin among cities to ban sales of companion animals in pet shops [International Business Times; Maggie Thurber, watchdog.org (Toledo, Ohio)]
- As UK energy prices soar, chimney sweeps return [Marian Tupy, Cato]
“Why it takes so long to build a bridge in America”
“There’s plenty of money. The problem is interminable environmental review.” That’s Philip K. Howard in the Wall Street Journal [summarized here; related Common Good forum with Regional Plan Association] Excerpt:
Canada requires full environmental review, with state and local input, but it has recently put a maximum of two years on major projects. Germany allocates decision-making authority to a particular state or federal agency: Getting approval for a large electrical platform in the North Sea, built this year, took 20 months; approval for the City Tunnel in Leipzig, scheduled to open next year, took 18 months. Neither country waits for years for a final decision to emerge out of endless red tape.