“The United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) union is pleading with consumers to ‘just say no to reusable bags’ for the duration of the pandemic, in order to protect baggers and cashiers who’ve inadvertently been placed on the front line.” [Patty Wetli, WTTW] Many cities and states are listening: “San Francisco has reversed its 13-year ban on plastic bags and will now prohibit the reusable bags city leaders once championed because of the coronavirus.” Massachusetts, New Hampshire and other states have taken similar steps. [Jeff Mordock, Washington Times] “We have always been at war with Reusable Totes” [Iowahawk]
Posts Tagged ‘environment’
Environment roundup
- “Ninth Circuit Dismisses Kids Climate Case for Lack of Standing” [Jonathan Adler, more; John Schwartz, New York Times; earlier here, here]
- Administration finishes replacing much-criticized Obama rule on Waters of the United States (WOTUS) [AgInfoNet, WilmerHale, earlier]
- Prop 65 mini-roundup: the California chemical-disclosure regime “has not been shown to provide benefits that justify its high cost.” [Michael Marlow, Cato Regulation magazine last summer] It has also created a $300 million/year industry that includes not a few shakedown artists [Cameron English, ACSH] Take two Tylenol and label them as hazardous chemicals or else [Masha Abarinova, Reason] Gas utility’s Prop 65 insert warning of exposure to, yes, natural gas [SoCalGas] From Cal Biz Lit, lists of 2019 settlements and consent judgments;
- Forcing insurers to renew risky policies: “California Politicians Double Down on Encouraging People To Live in Wildfire-Prone Areas” [Christian Britschgi]
- Exchange on the Price-Anderson Act and the liability regime it creates for nuclear power generation [John Cochrane; Tyler Cowen, Marginal Revolution] “Germany’s closing of nuclear power stations after Fukushima cost billions of dollars and killed thousands of people due to more air pollution.” [Alex Tabarrok]
- Two Cato Daily Podcast episodes hosted by Caleb Brown: why scaling back National Environmental Policy Act review of infrastructure projects “won’t have much of an impact on environmental quality.” [Peter Van Doren] Should Presidents wield unilateral power to lock or unlock use of federal land, as is conferred on them under the 1906 Antiquities Act? [Cato Daily Podcast with Caleb Brown and Jonathan Wood]
Down the drain with wasteful coalition politics
Hotel chain Marriott has a successful program that saves energy and water by inducing guests who stay more than one night to forgo room cleaning and laundry. Some environmental groups actively oppose this program because they are politically allied with labor unions that want to preserve jobs in hotel housekeeping. [Todd Myers, Washington Policy Center]
Land use and zoning roundup
- “NEPA Reforms a Big Step toward Correcting Worst Abuses of Environmental Permitting Process” [CEI on White House Council on Environmental Quality release of proposed revamp of National Environmental Policy Act]
- Developer, relying on NYC’s own interpretation of zoning rules, puts up 668-foot tower. City: whoops, we’ve decided that wasn’t a good interpretation, here’s a new one. Judge: now lop off nearly half the building. What’s wrong here? [Rick Hills, City Journal] “Mom-and-pop shops ‘blindsided’ by de Blasio’s sign crackdown” [Melanie Gray, New York Post]
- Challenge to Ohio town’s zoning ordinance limiting number of unrelated persons who can live together [Cato Daily Podcast with Maurice A. Thompson]
- Tradeable rights for NIMBY objectors? [Peter Van Doren]
- “Why the ‘Used Housing’ Market Should Be Like the Used Car Market” [Scott Beyer last summer]
- “How California Environmental Law Makes It Easy For Labor Unions To Shake Down Developers” [Christian Britschgi, Reason] NIMBYs keep In-N-Out Burger out of Rancho Mirage [same]
Nuclear power: the tort system angle
Discussed by economists Tyler Cowen and John Cochrane. Cowen:
…in general American society has become far more litigious, and it is much harder to build things, and risk-aversion and infrastructure-aversion have risen dramatically. ,,,
So the odds are that without a Price-Anderson Act America’s nuclear industry would have shut down some time ago, with no real chance of a return.
Cochrane in response:
A society that allows its lawyers to nearly bankrupt Toyota and Audi over non-existent auto defects, and now is shutting down Bayer over completely unscientific claims that Roundup causes cancer, is obviously going to quickly destroy any nuclear company over harms real and imagined. If we’re going to have nuclear, we need some limitation on this kind of adventurism, along with the legal and regulatory knots that make it almost impossible to build any infrastructure in the US today.
I file this in the “lack of state capacity” department. A good (adjective) Libertarian wants clear property rights, and a sensible tort system that pays some vague attention to scientific evidence. That is part of state infrastructure. When we say “infrastructure” people envision roads, but good courts, laws, regulations, property rights, and so forth are perhaps the most essential state-provided infrastructure.
Environmental roundup
- “The Climate Debate Should Focus on How to Address the Threat of Climate Change, Not Whether Such a Threat Exists” [Jonathan Adler, whose analysis of environmental law is often quoted in this space]
- “Grizzly Bears and Endangered Species Recovery” [Cato Daily Podcast with Brian Yablonski and Caleb Brown] “Property Rights as a Foundation for Conservation” [same, with Holly Fretwell and Brown]
- “If an environmentalist values the land more than ranchers do, then the environmentalist should get the lease.” [Shawn Regan, Reason; related on “diligence” regulations in federal resource leasing Robert M. Nelson, Regulation, Jan./Feb. 1983]
- “Litigation vs. Restoration: Addressing Louisiana’s Coastal Land Loss” [U.S. Chamber Institute for Legal Reform, earlier]
- Who will build the roads? Go ask Friedrich Engels [David Henderson, Econlib] Related: Market Urbanism Report podcast on road privatization and other topics with Robert Poole, Chris Edwards and others;
- “Florida Democratic Party adopts ‘rights of nature’ into platform” [Scott Powers, Florida Politics; see here, here, here, etc.]
“Why the power is going out in California”
An argument that policy and legal factors, including strict liability for wildfires, bars on recovering fire outlays in electric rates, and air-quality limits on prescribed burns, have brought California to its present blackout crisis. [Susan Shelley, L.A. Daily News]
Environment roundup
- In Knick v. Township of Scott, the Supreme Court overturned a precedent that made it hard for property owners to get justice in takings cases. Ilya Somin analyzes the outcome in the new Cato Supreme Court Review [more, earlier]
- But who will build the roads? “U.S. Should Adopt the Nordic Approach to Private Roads” [Giovanna da Silva, Devoe Moore Center Blog]
- One of the defining regulatory controversies of the past two years has been over the effort to reverse the Obama administration’s 2015 Waters of the United States (WOTUS) rule [Jonathan Adler, Cato Regulation magazine via Peter Van Doren] Another court has struck down the Obama rule [Adler]
- “The Public Trust Doctrine: A Brief (and True) History” [James L. Huffman, George Washington Journal of Energy and Environmental Law]
- “On Glyphosate, Who Do You Trust: UCSF Or Everybody Else?” [Alex Berezow, ACSH, earlier]
- “Trophy Hunting and African Development” [Cato podcast with Catherine Semcer and Caleb Brown]
Environment roundup
- “Whaling jobs were well-paying and glamorous by Soviet standards.” The story behind “arguably one of the greatest environmental crimes of the 20th century.” [Charles Homans, Pacific Standard]
- Laying groundwork for high-stakes lawsuits against agriculture and livestock industries over CO2 emissions [Daniel Walters, SSRN via Twitter]
- Laws banning plastic straws sometimes forget interests of disabled [Palo Alto Daily Post]
- Oregon ban on gold placer stream mining, California law giving state first refusal right in federal land sales are two places high court might want to clarify boundary of federal and state land authority [Jonathan Wood, Federalist Society]
- “The Troubled History of Cancer Risk Assessment: The Linear-No-Threshold paradigm, which asserts there are no safe exposure levels, is the product of flawed and corrupted science.” [Edward J. Calabrese, Cato Regulation magazine]
- Why the vultures of Spain tend to avoid crossing over into Portugal [Bruno Martin thread on Twitter]
Environment roundup
- EPA confirms the view of its peer agencies around the world: glyphosate weed killer, found in Roundup, is not a carcinogen [Tom Polansek, Reuters, earlier, more]
- Mayor Bulldozer? Critical look at Pete Buttigieg’s push to tear down hundreds of vacant dilapidated South Bend homes and fine the owners [Henry Gomez, BuzzFeed; see also Chris Sikich, Indianapolis Star]
- “Why Trump should call off the EPA’s latest assault on NYC” [Nicole Gelinas, New York Post; $3 billion to revamp and cover over a Yonkers reservoir]
- “‘High-yield’ farming costs the environment less than previously thought – and could help spare habitats” [Cambridge University]
- Is clarity finally coming on the scope of federal control of local surface waters? [Jonathan Adler on Trump administration “Waters of the United States” regulation; Tony Francois, Federalist Society on prospects for “navigable waters” at the Supreme Court]
- “New Jersey Court Strikes Down Use of Eminent Domain to Take Property to “Bank” it for Possible Future Use” [Ilya Somin] Pennsylvania law promoted as fixing blighted neighborhoods used to steal people’s homes [Eric Boehm]