ELI In the News
Environmental law constitutes a decent sliver of the Supreme Court's caseload, but none of the current justices seems to have much interest in environmental law, as such—or so I argue in my new article, "Which Way for the Roberts Court?", the cover story for the November/December 2020 issue of The Environmental Forum, published by the Environmental Law Institute.
Hydropower, which generates electricity through falling water, is Ethiopia's the most valued a renewable resource and accounts for more than 43 billion MW of electricity generation capacity. Unfortunately, this potential has not yet been fully utilized. Ethiopia's current power generation capacity is 4,300 MW and more than 80 percent of it is from water and the rest are from wind, solar and thermal. This clearly shows that hydropower is and will be the backbone of Ethiopia's energy-hungry economy of the country. The 4.5 billion USD dam, the Great Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) is at the heart of Ethiopia's manufacturing and industrial dreams and is expected to get the country out of poverty. When completed, it is expected to be able to generate a massive 6,000 megawatts of electricity and change the overall geostrategic importance of the Eastern Nile nations and the so-called historical rights of water use. . . .
The EPA’s pesticide inspectors will keep focusing on imported products, electronic commerce, and the accuracy of claims made in products purporting to protect against coronavirus infections, agency enforcement officials said Tuesday. The sheer volume of e-commerce in the midst of the pandemic has been a core reason the Environmental Protection Agency has focused on online sales of products making pesticidal claims, said Royan Teter, a supervisory life scientist at the EPA. . . .
The Environmental Law Institute (ELI) recently released Environment 2021: What Comes Next?, a report that looks at the Trump Administration’s impact on environmental law and policy and what lies ahead. ELI states that the report is “a response to growing demand for analysis of how deregulatory initiatives by the Trump Administration will affect environmental protection, governance, and the rule of law with a focus on what might happen in a second Trump administration or a new administration.” . . .
As a lifelong resident of St. John the Baptist Parish, Robert Taylor watched as the demographics of his hometown changed once the massive, powerful DuPont chemical company opened a chloroprene production plant in the parish in 1969. As soon as news broke more than a half-century ago that the DuPont plant was in the works, Taylor said, the white residents of St. John gradually picked up their stakes and left, as if they knew something very bad was about to happen. . . .
The Environmental Law Institute (ELI) has announced it will present its 2020 Environmental Achievement Award to Denis Hayes, the organizer of the first Earth Day and current president of the Bullitt Foundation, in recognition of his visionary leadership and outstanding environmental stewardship over a most distinguished career. . . .
At a meeting tomorrow, the US Senate Judiciary Committee is expected to confirm President Trump’s nomination of 37-year-old Justin Walker to become a judge on the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, the second-most-powerful court in the land and often a stepping-stone to the Supreme Court. The DC appeals court has made some key rulings on climate cases, and Walker will hold a lifetime appointment to it. Does he believe human activity is contributing to or causing climate change? . . .
A top Justice Department lawyer is defending the agency’s elimination of a popular settlement tool in environmental cases—and offering reassurances that the government will still require polluters to clean up their messes. Deputy Assistant Attorney General Jonathan Brightbill on Wednesday stressed that a March memo eliminating supplemental environmental projects, or SEPs, in federal enforcement deals doesn’t affect mitigation and other cleanup requirements. . . .
I know this risks sounding like what my kids call a ‘grandpa story,’ but context is important, particularly when talking about environmental regulation. Most Americans alive today were born after April 20, 1970, so have no personal frame of reference for what the country’s environment looked like before the first Earth Day, but it was not good. . . .
Plumas Unified School District’s Outdoor Core and science education coordinator Rob Wade is the recipient of a national award. Wade was acknowledged for promoting awareness in the field of wetlands conservation. . . .