Articles

Author: Damien M. Schiff Grist.com has this fairly well-balanced piece by Doug Kendall lauding retiring Justice John Paul Stevens' judicial decisions dealing with environmental law issues over his three-decade-plus tenure on the Supreme Court.  The article's thesis is that Justice Stevens universally practiced "deference to ...

Author:  Damien M. Schiff Here's a forthright piece from the environmentalist camp giving ten reasons why the recently begun climate talks in Cancun will achieve nothing.  I found particularly interesting the author's discussion of the economic pros and cons of greenhouse gas regulation: 3. Environmentalists have been disingenuo ...

Author:  Luke A. Wake In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, a lawsuit was filed against a handful of energy companies for their contributions to "global warming," on the theory that those companies had somehow made the hurricane worse by emitting greenhouse gases. These litigants argued that those emissions were unreasonable, despite th ...

In his environmentalist apologia for the Enviromental Protection Agency (EPA) entitled “EPA, job killer or people saver?” journalist LZ Granderson seeks to rehabilitate EPA from recent criticisms and attacks.  The thesis of Mr. Granderson’s piece is that, because our water and air quality have improved since EPA came into exist ...

Last week, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the dismissal of the Native Village of Kivalina’s tort damages claim against a large collection of the country’s major energy producers.  (PLF submitted an amicus brief in support of the defendants).  Kivalina had argued that the defendants’ greenhouse gas emissions had cont ...

In the wake of rumors that Interior Secretary Ken Salazar may resign from the cabinet, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson yesterday formally announced her departure.  Cabinet officials frequently rotate out of government as an administration transitions to a second term, so Jackson has not surprised anyone by leaving.  She has not announced a depa ...

In Native Village of Kivalina v. ExxonMobil Corp., the Ninth Circuit held that the Clean Air Act displaces any otherwise existing federal law of public nuisance.  (PLF filed an amicus brief supporting the energy companies).  Consequently, the court’s ruling eliminates the Village’s tort lawsuit, which sought damages from the defendant ...

Today is a big day for all things greenhouse gas, with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change releasing its Fifth Assessment Report.  Earlier this week, the similarly named (but differently purposed) Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change released its latest report, Climate Change Reconsidered II: Physical Science.  These tw ...

Environment — Clean Air Act PLF and the National Association of Manufacturers filed this joint opposition brief in Alec L. v. McCarthy which is now before the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals.  We intervened in this case in order to explain that there is no “public trust doctrine” for air that requires government to regulate … ...