- Getting deserved attention: blog post on hundred little regulatory obstacles that can block piecemeal redevelopment of commercial space [Johnny at Granola Shotgun via John Cochrane and Tyler Cowen]
- Suit that asserted legal personhood for Colorado River: a good case for sanctions? [Greg Herbers/WLF, Marianne Goodland, Colorado Springs Gazette]
- Large U.S. farm study finds no cancer link to Monsanto glyphosate (Roundup) weedkiller, state of California take note [Kate Kelland, Reuters, earlier here, here]
- Federalist Society video of address by EPA administrator Scott Pruitt at last month’s convention;
- Prince George’s County, Md., in the Washington suburbs, is considering a return to the practice of letting county council second-guess development approvals. Bad policy and corruption risk alike [David Whitehead and Bradley Heard, Greater Greater Washington]
- “Claims for unconstitutional takings of property against state actors should not be treated differently than other fundamental rights claims and relegated to second-class status.” [Ilya Shapiro, Trevor Burrus, and Meggan DeWitt, Cato on Knick v. Township of Scott, Pennsylvania]
Posts Tagged ‘environment’
Monument designations and White House proclamations
Some imagine President Obama can expand the bounds of national monuments by unilateral proclamation, but President Trump cannot shrink them back by the same mechanism. But that’s not how it works, explained Jonathan Wood in a September piece on the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase/Escalante controversy.
More: Ronald Bailey. And Randal O’Toole on a high-profile lawsuit:
I visited the Patagonia web site looking for some Christmas presents yesterday and learned that “the president stole my land.” How horrible! So I looked into it and discovered that President Trump took federal land that was managed by a particular set of federal agencies under a particular set of restrictions and changed it into federal land managed by the very same federal agencies under a slightly different set of restrictions. Not to jump on Patagonia, whose clothing I’ve always enjoyed, but where’s the theft in that?
Scientist sues colleagues over renewables claims
“Stanford University professor Mark Jacobson, whose research argues the U.S. power grid could run exclusively on renewable energy by 2050, is taking his critics to court. Jacobson filed a $10 million libel lawsuit in September against Chris Clack, a mathematician and chief executive of Vibrant Clean Energy, and the National Academy of Sciences, after the Academy published an article by Clack and 20 co-authors criticizing the 2015 study. The co-authors are not named in the suit.” [Lindsay Marchello/Reason, Keith Pickering/Daily Kos, Robert Bryce/NRO] Here’s Jonathan Adler:
…Some of the arguments made in the complaint are a bit bizarre. For instance, Jacobson claims the NAS violated its conflict-of-interest disclosure policies by failing to note that some of the contributors to the Clack, et al., paper are “advocates” for various policy positions. Yet Jacobson’s own paper doesn’t list his own policy advocacy as a potential conflict of interest either.
The idea that academic researchers should turn to court when their work is criticized or contradicted by other researchers is a pernicious one, challenging the sort of robust inquiry upon which scientific research and the discovery of knowledge require. It is absolutely essential that researchers are free to posit hypotheses and subject others’ hypotheses to critique. This inevitably entails not just questioning other researchers’ conclusions, but also pointing out potential errors and mistakes. Of course it’s true that strong critiques of one’s academic work may have an effect on one’s academic reputation, but that goes with the territory. The same goes for making erroneous allegations against other researchers. If the fear of such reputational harms is compounded by the threat of litigation, academic inquiry will be chilled as researchers become more reluctant to point out the problems in each others’ work….
Like Michael Mann’s long-running defamation suit, this complaint appears to be little more than an effort to use a legal club to stifle robust critique and debate. (In that regard, it should be no surprise that Jacobson’s suit was filed in the same venue.)
“How Washington Made Harvey Worse”
“A federal insurance program made Harvey far more costly—and Congress could have known it was coming.” [Michael Grunwald, Politico, more] And from July, “Reforming the National Flood Insurance Program: Toward Private Flood Insurance” [Ike Brannon and Ari Blask, Cato Policy Analysis]
More: “Lack of Zoning Is Not Houston’s Problem” [Vanessa Brown Calder, Cato; Nolan Gray, CityLab]
D.C. Circuit: pipeline environmental review must include impacts of eventual gas use
Before the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission can approve a new pipeline it must engage in environmental review not just of the impact of the pipeline itself on its surroundings, but of the later carbon emissions when end users burn the gas it carries. So ruled the D.C. Circuit August 24 in Sierra Club v. FERC. [Emily Flitter/Reuters, Timothy Cama/The Hill, Pace Law] Judge Janice Rogers Brown dissented in relevant part, noting that FERC’s regulatory authority in this instance does not extend to later decisions about use:
Case law is clear: When an agency “‘has no ability to prevent a certain effect due to’ [its] ‘limited statutory authority over the relevant action[],’ then that action ‘cannot be considered a legally relevant cause’” of an indirect environmental effect under the National Environmental Policy Act (“NEPA”).
One wonders whether review of the siting of new supermarkets will someday need to include the environmental impacts expected to follow after local residents consume food sold there.
Environment roundup
- Farmers were among leading opponents of 2015 WOTUS (Waters of the United States) rule, and for good reason [Lawrence A. Kogan, WLF, earlier]
- “The Antiquities Act has become a tool for presidents to secure their legacies with special interests.” [Jonathan Wood/Reason, earlier] “State Officials Urge Local Consultation When Designating National Monuments” [Aileen Yeung, Western Wire, more]
- West Hollywood imposes onerous exactions if you build multi-unit housing. Takings alert [Ilya Shapiro, David McDonald on Cato certiorari petition in case of 616 Croft Ave., LLC v. City of West Hollywood]
- Random goofball’s letter to editor calls for violence against oil and gas workers. I wouldn’t mess with oil and gas workers, actually [Western Wire]
- Vermont Law School, known for environmentalist mission, gets $17 million loan from U.S. Department Of Agriculture [Paul Caron/TaxProf]
- “Is everything a crime under the Endangered Species Act?” [Jonathan Wood, related on McKittrick policy] “Vigorous Dissent from Fifth Circuit’s Denial of Rehearing Should Help ESA Frog-Habitat Case Leap to Supreme Court” [Samuel Boxerman with Katharine Falahee Newman, WLF]
Environment roundup
- Power to regulate interstate commerce includes power to keep property owner from evicting a prairie dog? Sounds rational to Tenth Circuit [Ilya Shapiro and David McDonald]
- Dimock, Pa. episode was central to anti-fracking lore including movie “Gasland,” now judge has overturned $4 million verdict in case [Timothy Cama, The Hill]
- “EPA Employees Organize Against Taxpayers” [NPR via David Boaz on Twitter]
- Sweetheart consent decrees (“sue and settle”) enable agencies to bypass notice-and-comment rulemaking in adopting controversial rules, as with EPA natural gas plant rule [WLF]
- Judge rebukes Delaware Riverkeeper in FERC pipeline case [Erin Mundahl, Inside Sources]
- On the way out, President Obama designated vast tract of Atlantic ocean as “monument,” forbidding commercial fishing. Irrational as policy, as law, and as procedure [Jonathan Wood]
Environment roundup
- “The river can’t stop people from throwing hooks in it, which seems like an important right for a legal person to have” [Lowering the Bar] “Just days after New Zealand declared the Whanganui River a legal person, the world’s population of river people (not people who live on the river, but rivers who are people) tripled, when a court in India waved its judicial wand and transformed the Ganges and Yamuna rivers” [same, follow-up]
- One way to make Vladimir Putin unhappy: support legal fracking in U.S. [Eric Roston, Bloomberg]
- Stadium subsidies for the Patagonia set: outdoor gear makers push federal Western land grabs [Terry Anderson]
- Washington Post account of Wyoming rancher Clean Water case might deserve a Pinocchio or two of its own [Jonathan Wood]
- “When should the federal government own land?” [Tyler Cowen]
- Missed this 2014 Los Angeles Times investigation into the story behind a federal raid on pot-hunters in the rural Southwest [“A Sting in the Desert“]
Making Clean Water Act legal fees two-way
The Clean Water Act, like many federal statutes, currently contains a nominally neutral attorneys’-fee award provision which is commonly read to call for an award of attorneys’ fees to plaintiffs who prevail, but not to defendants who prevail. H.R. 1179, introduced by Rep. Tom Rice (R-S.C.) with 59 co-sponsors, would move to full two-way loser-pays by prescribing that fees ordinarily be paid. One possible impact would be to help clear infrastructure legal logjams [Charmaine Little, Legal Newsline, thanks for quote]
Environment roundup
- Here come big, beautiful eminent domain cases over condemnation of land for the US-Mexico wall [Gideon Kanner, Ilya Somin]
- Judge greenlights “public trust” climate change suit, an exercise in court- and lawyer-empowerment [Samuel Boxerman, WLF]
- Next Friday, Mar. 17, Cato will host panel on pending SCOTUS case of Murr v. Wisconsin (property rights, regulatory takings) with Roger Pilon (Cato), J. Peter Byrne (Georgetown Law), and Ilya Somin (George Mason Law), with opening remarks by Todd Gaziano (Pacific Legal) and moderated by Ilya Shapiro (Cato) [register or watch online]
- Swallowing dubious health claims, Maryland advisory panel urges schools to turn off wi-fi. Plenty wrong with that [ACSH]
- By 31-69 margin, Los Angeles voters crush anti-development Measure S, “NIMBYism on steroids” [City Observatory, earlier]
- Tackling WOTUS is just the start: “The Clean Water Act Needs A Reset” [Reed Hopper, Investors, Jonathan Wood, related]