On November 7, the National Geographic Channel is premiering Great Migrations, a seven-episode series that chronicles the movements of animals on every continent, from the magnificent monarch butterfly migration from Mexico to northern Canada to the impressive wildebeest migration across the plains of the Serengeti.

A report by the United Nations concluded that climate change will impact population sizes, species distribution, the timing of reproduction and migration events, and the increased vulnerability to disease and predation. Compounding these effects are additional human-induced changes to the natural environment, including habitat degradation and destruction, water and air pollution, and the spread of invasive species. Of all the organisms on the planet, migratory species are among the most affected by climate change, which has the potential to affect each step of their life cycle.  A Kenyan newspaper recently reported that this year’s wildebeest migration was abruptly shortened, possibly due …

Cross-posted from Legal Planet.

The Minerals Management Service within the Department of Interior was responsible for overseeing offshore oil development in federal waters from its creation in 1982 until its demise earlier this year. MMS was always a troubled agency, to put it mildly, dogged by scandals and a revolving door with the industry it regulates. After the Deepwater Horizon incident made its failings obvious, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar reorganized MMS out of existence, promising that the new management structure would “improve the management, oversight, and accountability of activities on the Outer Continental Shelf.”

Salazar replaced MMS with the new Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation, and Enforcement (an awkward name that produces the even more awkward acronym BOEM or BOEMRE, which I’m told people in the Gulf have already taken to pronouncing as “bummer”). In order to try to reduce perceived conflicts of interest, BOEMRE …

Since my post last week ("Convictions for Violations of the Clean Water Act Continue to Ebb"), a number of significant things have occurred. On October 20, the EPA’s Assistant Administrator for Enforcement and Compliance Assurance, Cynthia Giles, announced that the Director of the Office of Criminal Enforcement, Forensics and Training was retiring and that the Director of the Criminal Investigation Division had decided to pursue new challenges within the agency. In addition to this personnel shake-up, Assistant Administrator Giles has pledged to hire 40 more criminal investigators at EPA. The number of investigators had fallen from 205 in 2003 to approximately 160. The agency appears, therefore, to be committed to reinvigorating what seems to have been, at least until recently, a lagging criminal enforcement effort. 

In response to a reporter’s inquiry prompted by my post, EPA disputed TRAC Reports' projection of convictions that would be …

On October 14, the White House’s Climate Change Adaptation Task Force released its recommendations to President Obama for how agencies can better prepare the United States to respond to the impacts of climate change.  Once again we are reminded of how important it is to have an Administration that takes climate science seriously.

According to the scientists, even if we curb emissions, global temperatures will continue to rise for decades, bringing along with them rising seas, more heat waves, more severe flooding, and more serious droughts. The Task Force’s report is a solid step forward in preparing the U.S. to deal with the challenges of climate change. There are five key recommendations.

1. Mainstream adaptation as a standard part of agency planning. Agency adaptation plans should prioritize the most vulnerable people, places, and infrastructure. The plans should utilize ecosystem based approaches.  Getting agencies to …

According to the latest data published by TRAC Reports, the number of federal convictions obtained for violations of the Clean Water Act during fiscal year 2010 has continued to follow a recent downward trajectory. Since reaching a high of nearly 70 in FY 1998, the number of convictions has continued to decline toward what may be its lowest level since the early 1990s. During the first ten months of FY 2010, the Department of Justice reported 23 convictions, a pace that would produce 28 convictions for the entire fiscal year—a decline of  60 percent since FY 1998.

This is a disturbing trend since vigorous enforcement activity is a critical component of any credible environmental protection program. Convictions alone, however, do not necessarily reveal how effective a criminal enforcement program may be. A strategic decision to pursue tougher, higher quality cases rather than run-of-the-mill cases would likely …

The EPA Region 5 recently published a refreshingly blunt report on the state of concentrated animal feeding operation (CAFO) permitting in Illinois, and the assessment is disturbing. EPA concluded that the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency’s National Pollution Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permitting program for CAFOs “does not meet minimum thresholds for an adequate program.” Ouch.

As in many other states around the country, agriculture in Illinois is one of the state’s leading economic drivers and one of the leading sources of water pollution. The state has the fourth largest concentration of large-scale hog confinements in the United States, producing 4.5 million hogs each year. This massive hog production, highly concentrated in CAFOs, comes at a significant environmental cost. According to the state’s 2004 Water Quality Report, more than 85% of Illinois’ public lake acreage is impaired, largely attributable to agriculture. Moreover, the agriculture …

EPA’s proposal to curb emissions from the second largest source of mercury in the United States – industrial boilers and process heaters – has come under fire in recent weeks.  Those industries that would be subject to the “boiler rule” have objected to its costs, and some senators have embraced their claims (see also Lisa Jackson's response). The industry story, however, leaves out important facts.

The industry story does not mention that, on balance, the estimated costs of the rule are dwarfed by the benefits it would deliver in terms of human health. According to the Regulatory Impact Analysis (RIA) for the rule, regulating boilers would result in societal benefits ranging from $18 billion to $45 billion, at a cost of $3.4 billion. Thus, the rule is estimated to deliver net benefits in the neighborhood of $15 billion to $41 billion. To put it another way …

CPR Member Scholar Daniel Farber and Richard Frank, both of BerkeleyLaw, have an op-ed in the LA Times today on Proposition 23, the ballot initiative that would suspsend California's climate law, AB 32. They argue:

For California to retreat on the climate issue now would send a defeatist message nationally and worldwide. It's true that other climate measures would remain on the books, but suspending AB 32 would be like benching a football team's quarterback while leaving the other players leaderless on the field.

A new CPR white paper today argues that the BP oil spill and its attendant environmental and economic harm were entirely preventable, and indeed, would have been avoided had government regulators over the years been pushed and empowered by determined leadership and given sufficient resources to enforce the law.

The paper, Regulatory Blowout: How Regulatory Failures Made the BP Disaster Possible, and How the System Can Be Fixed to Avoid a Recurrence (press release), examines the performance of multiple regulatory agencies, most conspicuously, the Minerals Management Service (MMS), since reorganized and rebranded as the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement (BOEMRE).

Among the recommendations:

• Congress should amend the OCSLA to overhaul environmental review procedures, require inter-agency consultation, extend deadlines for review, increase penalties, and create incentives for continual safety innovation.
• The President should request, and Congress should provide, adequate funding for BOEMRE so that it …