Argument Analysis: The Trail, the Pipeline, and a Journey to the Center of the Earth
This post was originally published on SCOTUSblog. It is republished here under a Creative Commons license (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 US).
Environmental groups faced a skeptical bench during Monday's argument in two consolidated cases, U.S. Forest Service v. Cowpasture River Preservation Association and Atlantic Coast Pipeline LLC v. Cowpasture River Preservation Association, as they fought to preserve a 2018 decision from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit that had halted an $8 billion, 600-mile natural gas pipeline. At the heart of the dispute is a 2017 permit granted by the U.S. Forest Service to allow the Atlantic Coast Pipeline to cross the George Washington National Forest. The permit also authorized the developers to tunnel 600 feet beneath the Appalachian Trail within the forest. Vacating the permit, the 4th Circuit held that the entire 2,100-mile Appalachian Trail is part of the National Park System and therefore, under the Mineral Leasing Act, the trail is off-limits for energy development and pipeline rights-of-way.
At oral argument, a majority of justices appeared inclined to reverse the 4th Circuit. There was no clear consensus on the grounds for reversal, however, and we could see several opinions released this …
This post was originally published on SCOTUSblog. It is republished here under a Creative Commons license (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 US).
On Monday, February 24, the Supreme Court will hear argument in U.S. Forest Service v. Cowpasture River Preservation Association and Atlantic Coast Pipeline LLC v. Cowpasture River Preservation Association. These consolidated cases pit a pipeline developer and the U.S. Forest Service against environmental groups that want to halt the pipeline's construction and protect the Appalachian Trail.
The court will have to construe several statutes, including the Mineral Leasing Act, which promotes pipeline rights-of-way and other energy development on federal lands (except lands in the National Park System), and the National Trails System Act, which designated the Appalachian Trail as a National Scenic Trail and put the Secretary of the Interior in charge of administering it. The secretary later delegated that authority to the National …
Reposted by permission from the Environmental Law Prof Blog.
This morning E&E News reported that researchers from the Netherlands and the Environmental Defense Fund had quantified a massive natural gas leak at an Exxon-subsidiary-owned well in Ohio. According to the study, the well leaked around 60,000 tons of methane.
That made me wonder: what might the carbon tax bill for a leak like that be? The answer, of course, is $0, because neither the United States as a whole nor the state of Ohio has a carbon tax (or a cap-and-trade system that would also put a price on carbon). But what if we did, and what if the tax rate approached the social cost of carbon? How much would that one leak cost Exxon (and, of course, put into the United States treasury, for the benefit of the public)?
A rough answer is very simple …
This commentary is excerpted from The American Prospect.
Hiking south on the Appalachian Trail from Reeds Gap in Virginia, my teenage daughter and I come to a clearing. We’re at the Three Ridges Overlook, taking in the view of the Rockfish River Valley undulating to the east. Piney Mountain, blanketed in a green canopy of oaks and poplars, stares back at us from across the divide. This tranquil section of the iconic trail is the subject of a four-year legal battle that landed in June at the Supreme Court. It’s the spot where Dominion Energy wants to route the controversial Atlantic Coast Pipeline (ACP), a $7.5 billion, 600-mile, 42-inch-diameter pipe that will carry fracked natural gas from the depths of the Marcellus Shale in West Virginia. The pipeline would run up and over several mountain ranges to the Virginia coast and to eastern North …
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