Environmental Policy & Law

Fellow Story

Washburn joins Policy Resolution Group at Bracewell & Giuliani

As a teenager, Eric Washburn immersed himself in books about ecology. Home-schooled for a year on a ranch in Colorado's Yampa River Valley, the future aide to two Senate Democratic leaders shot thousands of photographs of local wildlife. "I think that was the most formative year of my life," said Washburn, who just joined the Policy Resolution Group at Bracewell & Giuliani. "It was that Colorado experience that instilled in me that love of nature."
June 17, 2014
Fellow Story

Hansen partners with WVU law school to analyze new EPA clean power plan

The Center for Energy and Sustainable Development at the West Virginia University College of Law will be analyzing the Environmental Protection Agency’s new plan to cut carbon pollution from power plants. Teaming up with Downstream Strategies, a Morgantown-based environmental consulting firm, the Center will be working on a project titled “Carbon Dioxide Emission Reduction Opportunities for the West Virginia Power Sector.” They will explore the various strategies available to West Virginia to comply with the EPA’s Clean Power Plan Proposed Rule. ...
June 11, 2014
Fellow Story

Lessons Learned from Testifying Before the U.S Senate on Behalf of the State of California

One of the ways our Fellows lead is by providing expert testimony before state and national legislative bodies. In March, Mike Wilson and Evan Hansen were called to testify before the U.S.
March 29, 2014
Fellow Story

Cohen advocates pushing Caltrans to relinquish oversight of bike facilities on urban streets

TransForm Executive Director Stuart Cohen urged the Assembly to push Caltrans to move forward on one of SSTI’s most immediately-achievable steps: relinquishing oversight of bike facilities on urban streets and endorsing the National Association of City Transportation Officials Urban Street Design Guide. ”When Caltrans first put in place this requirement that cities and states follow its Highway Design Manual’s guidance on bicycle design, it made sense,” he said. “There wasn’t good practice on rearranging intersections and how to design bike lanes.
March 27, 2014
Fellow Story

Aldy concludes green stimulus was worth it, even if federal clean-energy loan guarantee program wasn't

The federal clean-energy loan guarantee program that gave you Solyndra wasn’t just a multibillion-dollar political debacle – it also didn’t create jobs, didn’t reduce carbon emissions and ran up financial risk for taxpayers. And yet, the program wasn’t enough of a bust to outweigh the job-creation and emissions-reducing successes of the complete $90 billion “green stimulus” the Obama administration built into the $800 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act four years ago, as the country was plunging deeper into recession.
March 27, 2014
Fellow Story

Clark's book on Slow Democracy featured on Charlotte NPR

The Slow Food movement argues that the concept of fast food is a symbol of what’s wrong with the world today- centralization, top-down homogeneity, mass produced… and that we should embrace Local. Our guest today says that same philosophy should be applied to government. With government mistrust and low approval ratings for members of Congress at a near all-time high, Susan Clark, author of Slow Democracy, says we should pay attention our local government.
March 26, 2014
Fellow Story

Bunin writes USDA's latest "coexistence" policy fails to address GMO contamination of organic crops

At a time when consumers are demanding greater access to organic and non-genetically engineered (GE) foods, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) latest, “coexistence” policy threatens the ability and right of consumers to make that shift.
March 26, 2014
Fellow Story

Hays on what makes climate resilient communities

In 1995, a severe heat wave struck Chicago, killing more than 700 people. The disaster hit some neighborhoods much harder than others. For the most part, its devastation closely traced the city's economic and ethnic segregation. More people died in places like Englewood, a South Side neighborhood with a history of poverty and crime, and a largely African-American population; yet some neighborhoods with this same demographic fared remarkably well.
March 25, 2014
Fellow Story

Luers warns global warming likely to surpass 2 degrees Celsius target

"A policy narrative that continues to frame this target as the sole metric of success or failure to constrain climate change risk is now itself becoming dangerous," wrote Todd Sanford and Peter Frumhoff of UCS in the commentary published Wednesday in Nature Climate Change. "[It] ill-prepares society to confront and manage the risks of a world that is increasingly likely to experience warming well in excess of 2°C this century," said the piece, co-authored by Amy Luers of the San Francisco-based Skoll Global Threats Fund, and Jay Gulledge, of the U.S.
March 24, 2014
Fellow Story

Hsu panelist on Guardian podcast about big data's usefulness for sustainability

Advances in technology mean the amount of digital information we collectively possess is growing exponentially. Estimates suggest that by 2020 there will be 300 times more information in the world than there was in 2005. Big data has the power to transform the way corporations understand the impact of their business on the environment, and prompt them to take action on sustainability. But storing and gathering this data is costly in itself, with large data servers located across the world consuming huge amounts of energy and adding to carbon emissions.
March 24, 2014