Showing 2,796 results
Holly Doremus | March 23, 2009
This item is cross-posted by permission from Legal Planet. Demonstrating once again the importance of presidential elections and appointments, the 9th Circuit has upheld the National Marine Fisheries Service’s policy on considering hatchery fish in listing Pacific salmonids. (Hat tip: ESA blawg.) Hatchery fish can be a boon or a bane to salmon conservation. Because […]
Matt Shudtz | March 20, 2009
In his appearance on Jay Leno’s show last night, President Obama argued (video, transcript) for financial regulations by making a comparison between credit cards, mortgages, and toasters: “When you buy a toaster, if it explodes in your face there’s a law that says your toasters need to be safe. But when you get a credit […]
Rena Steinzor | March 20, 2009
The financial cataclysm gripping the country is often (and rightly) blamed on a lax system of public and private oversight of financial institutions. On the private side, investors trusted huge auditing companies like Arthur Anderson to rate multinational corporations for fiscal soundness. Meanwhile, Arthur Anderson also took handsome fees from the same corporations to conduct […]
Margaret Clune Giblin | March 19, 2009
More than 10,000 oil and gas wells puncture the land within Pennsylvania’s half-million acre Allegheny National Forest (ANF)—more than in all the other national forests combined, according to the non-profit Allegheny Defense Project. Back in the mid-1990s, about 100 new wells were drilled each year; today, it’s about 1,300 per year. The boom is driven […]
Yee Huang | March 18, 2009
Florida’s beaches draw millions of tourists each year, and coastal towns like Palm Beach have a great interest in protecting the beaches against erosion and sea-level rise. They have experimented with various adaptation and reinforcement techniques, some more successful than others, but none is a permanent solution. In an administrative hearing on March 2, Judge […]
Holly Doremus | March 17, 2009
This item is cross-posted by permission from Legal Planet. It’s easy for environmentalists to get depressed, given the amount of bad news about climate change, species losses, and the like. But sometimes there is unexpectedly good news. This morning’s New York Times has one of those stories. The Atlantic right whale, which not long […]
Rena Steinzor | March 17, 2009
The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) invited public comments on the design of its new Executive Order on regulatory review, and CPR has now submitted our recommendations. We urged the Obama Administration to make fundamental changes in how OMB and prospective “regulatory czar” Cass Sunstein operate. We're hopeful that the new Administration will convert […]
Dan Rohlf | March 16, 2009
The Associated Press reported last week that the Commerce Department’s inspector general is looking into who leaked a draft of the Bush Administration’s plans to prevent federal agencies from considering the impacts of greenhouse gas emissions on species protected under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). Oklahoma Senator James Inhofe, expressing concern over what he termed […]
Matt Shudtz | March 13, 2009
Last week’s Supreme Court decision in Wyeth v. Levine protected consumers’ longstanding right to take pharmaceutical companies to court for failing to properly warn patients and their doctors about the risks posed by the drugs they market. Unfortunately, people injured by faulty medical devices don’t have the same right following last year’s Riegel v. Medtronic […]