Cuba Libre: The Link Between Freedom and Environmental Health
Earlier this week in Havana’s Gran Teatro, President Obama urged Cubans in this new century to keep their eyes on the prize of “sustainable prosperity.” His remarks focused on the foundational role of political freedom, but not before underlining the importance of environmental protection too. That’s no surprise. Economic growth in Cuba will depend heavily on the natural systems that keep the island’s 11 million people fed, sheltered, and buffered from storms. Indeed, the U.S. State Department’s negotiations with Cuba stressed this very point: two of four agreements reached since the re-opening of diplomatic relations involved resource protection and preparing for the impacts of climate change. The expected influx of U.S. tourists, businesses, and developers—another key to economic success—promises to add a corresponding layer of environmental stress.
Last spring I traveled to Cuba as part of a New Orleans delegation and saw the challenges first hand. Cuba, long called the “Jewel of the Caribbean,” offers a brilliant landscape, with some of the best preserved shorelines and reefs in the region. But look further and you will find great vistas of urban dilapidation, leaking sewer systems, and frayed carpets of contaminated marsh. Among …
There was a surprise question about climate change at the last Republican debate. What was surprising wasn’t the question itself. Instead, it was the source of the question: Tomás Regalado, the Republican mayor of Miami. It turns out that this wasn’t a fluke.
Regalado and the Republican mayor of Miami Beach have spoken out in an op-ed about climate change:
“The overwhelming scientific consensus is that the rising sea levels are caused by the planet warming, that the burning of fossil fuels is driving this warming, and that we need to act quickly to avoid the worst impacts ahead. These are the facts. We shouldn’t waste time debating them.”
Or consider this, from a Republican Member of Congress:
“Rising sea levels and the erosion of our coastal communities have made it abundantly clear that South Florida is at the frontline of climate change. . . . If …
Recently, I have been noticing a number of connections between the environmental policies or issues that I’ve been studying and modern economic doctrine. I’m not sure if the number or strength of these connections are enough to claim that we’re seeing a rise in “laissez faire environmentalism” in the Chesapeake Bay region, but the implications are interesting to consider nevertheless.
Nutrient trading is the best example. There is little question that the notion of pollution trading stems directly from economic principles, ultimately leading to a sulfur dioxide trading program to control acid rain during the George H.W. Bush years. I don’t have to work very hard to draw those parallels. And while pollution trading in the context of water is less pervasive or understood than it is in the context of air, more than a few papers have catalogued the dozens of …
Maryland’s high court ruled last week in favor of the Maryland Department of the Environment (MDE) in a challenge by several advocacy groups against five municipal stormwater (“MS4”) permits issued by MDE. While reading the lengthy opinion on my computer, I felt at times like a raving sports fan yelling at the TV in frustration. My frustration was borne not of the court’s specific arguments, or even of concerns over any far-reaching legal implications of the decision. Rather, to understand why this decision has generated such frustration, it is important to understand the timing and context of this decision.
Generally speaking, court decisions merely upholding existing programs and the status quo, such as in the present case, rarely generate outrage. Moreover, I acknowledge that reasonable minds certainly can differ in interpreting complicated legal matters, as each of the seven reasonable minds on Maryland’s Court …
Many thought that the BP Oil Spill would lead to new environmental legislation, as happened after past environmental disasters. That didn’t happen. But something else did happen: BP paid $24 billion in civil and criminal penalties. In an era where any effort at government regulation is immediately denounced as a dire threat to liberty, there was nary a peep out of Republican politicians about these massive penalties. Nor do I hear Trump, Cruz, or Rubio defending Volkswagen from penalties. The moral is that the public is much more united behind punishment for corporate wrongdoers than it is about new regulation.
This makes sense if you think about the arguments that are made against regulation. Opponents of regulation have successfully spun their position as protecting consumers from higher prices and workers from lost jobs. Corporate shareholders, and corporations as entities, don’t get such a respectful hearing …
Since Justice Scalia’s passing, the blogosphere has been abuzz with speculation about how the changed composition of the Court will affect environmental law. This post adds a little more to that speculation. My focus is not the Clean Power Plan litigation, which has (justifiably) gathered much of the attention, but instead the litigation over the joint EPA-Army Corps Clean Water Rule. And my prediction is a bit different from most predictions about the Clean Power Plan. Here, I predict, that changes in court composition probably won’t matter much.
Before I explain the reasons for that prediction, a little context may be helpful. The Clean Water Rule (also sometimes referred to as the Waters of the United States Rule (or just WOTUS)) determines the geographic scope of federal jurisdiction under the Clean Water Act. The Army Corps and EPA jointly released the rule last summer. Its …
Chief Justice Roberts turned down a request this morning to stay EPA’s mercury rule. Until the past month, this would have been completely un-noteworthy, because such a stay would have been unprecedented. But the Court’s startling recent stay of the EPA Clean Power Plan suggested that the door might have been wide open. Fortunately, that doesn’t seem to be true.
In some ways, a stay in this case would be even more shocking than the earlier one. Only the states, not industry, were seeking the stay. Some industry members even argued that a stay would just disrupt their planning. Moreover, as the government pointed out, the states were seeking review of a very narrow issue: whether the D.C. Circuit should have vacated the rule pending a remand to the agency. Since the agency plans to act within the next six weeks, this issue …
The mysterious deaths of 13 bald eagles on Maryland's Eastern Shore last month captured headlines around the country. While a tragic story, it was also a reminder of just how far bald eagle populations and those of other birds of prey have recovered over the last several decades. From a population of fewer than 1,000 in 1963, almost as many bald eagles now soar in the skies over Maryland alone. The iconic bird's recovery is a case study in the value of regulating toxics in our environment.
The story of the bald eagle's decline and subsequent recovery highlights both our previous failure to understand the acute toxicity in the air and water of industrialized nations and the subsequent success of environmental regulation. In fact, the use of the pesticide DDT and its impact on one of our most cherished national symbols almost singled-handedly galvanized the environmental …
The Supreme Court today denied certiorari in a case challenging the watershed-wide effort led by the EPA to reduce pollution flowing into the Chesapeake Bay. The Court's action leaves standing a lower court ruling upholding the effort. CPR Member Scholar Rena Steinzor, Professor of Law at the University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law, issued the following reaction:
"The Supreme Court's decision is a milestone victory for the restoration of the Chesapeake Bay and the thousands of local waters in the Bay watershed. Today's decision should at last put an end to any efforts to evade responsibility for reducing nutrient and sediment pollution. The Bay cleanup effort still has a very long way to go, with a lot of tough decisions and hard work ahead, but the Court's ruling should give hope to the millions of people in this region who …
Legislative committees in both the Maryland House and Senate are holding hearings this week on the Poultry Litter Management Act, a bill that has been attracting a lot of attention in Maryland and beyond. I have been asked to testify as part of a panel featuring representatives of the United States Geological Survey and the Chesapeake Bay Foundation. The focus of my testimony will be the problems posed by farm animal manure – in this case, poultry litter on Maryland’s Eastern Shore.
You can read the full testimony here, but the crux of it is that the creation of an effective and comprehensive manure management policy is one of the biggest missing pieces in the puzzle that is the Chesapeake Bay Total Maximum Daily Load (Bay TMDL). Simply put, addressing the massive nutrient imbalance in areas like Maryland’s Eastern Shore and the greater Delmarva Peninsula caused …
