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UC Davis recently hosted a conference marking the 50th anniversary of the California Air Resources Board . Richard Frank reports at Legal Planet : CARB convened for the first time in January 1968, following enabling legislation prompted by the chronic, crippling smog that enveloped Southern California, its residents and economy in the 1950’s and `60’s.  The Board quickly became a national and international leader in air pollution regulatory strategy and pollution control technologies for stationary and vehicular sources alike.  That leadership was reflected in the 1970 Clean Air Act, when Congress granted California–alone among the states–the authority to adopt vehicle emission standards more stringent than those promulgated by the federal government.  (Attendees were reminded at the “CARB at 50” conference that this longstanding federal deference to California auto emission standards is due in large part to strong and successful lobbying by then-California Republica...

From Legal Planet : On Friday, January 19, 2018, the University of California, Davis, will host a major conference commemorating the California Air Resources Board’s 50th anniversary.  The conference represents a three-way partnership between UCD School of Law’s California Environmental Law and Policy Center, UCD’s Institute for Transportation Studies and CARB. Since its creation in 1967, CARB has been a model of environmental stewardship, pollution control innovation and public service.  Years before passage of the federal Clean Air Act, CARB pioneered the nation’s first air pollution emission limits and pollution control technologies for motor vehicles—accomplishments that served as a model for the nation and the world.  More recently, CARB has led California’s multifaceted strategy to curb the state’s greenhouse gas emissions, again serving as both an inspiration and model for the global community. The January 19th conference at UC Davis will both celebrate CARB’s past...

The Court of Aldermen and Common Council of the City of London (1780) Last week's  Reviews in History posted a review by Elly Robson of William Cavert's  The Smoke of London: Energy and Environment in the Early Modern City  (Cambridge UP, 2016, recently out in paperback). (For an earlier review see here .) From the review: Cavert is particularly strong on the complex role of political and legal institutions – both local and national – in managing coal supply and regulating smoke. In his account, the politics of coal and smoke was a politics of governance. Chapter five, ‘Nuisance and neighbours’, deals with the legal category of ‘nuisance’ to cast light on how conflict over pollution was defined and mediated. In it, Calvert investigates a smorgasbord of relatively ineffective litigious avenues for pursuing redress against industrial polluters who infringed on royal or individual property and health. Law Reports form the mainstay of the chapter and Cavert’s frustration is eviden...

Toronto Terminals Railway Central Heating Plant, 1929 Working through my backlog, I recently came across Owen Temby's 2015 article in Planning Perspectives,   "Policy symbolism and air pollution in Toronto and Ontario, 1963–1967" . The article has an interesting take on the secular movement of environmental regulation from the local level to higher levels of government. The argument that industry had more influence at the provincial level than at the municipal level is interesting since environmental groups are also often assumed to prefer higher levels of government, where they can better concentrate the diffuse environmental interests of the public. The article also cuts against the assumption that local regulation was relatively weak, and that the national-level regulation of the 1960s and later was some kind of victory for environmental interests. Food for thought. The abstract: In 1967, jurisdiction over clean air policy in Toronto and the rest of Ontario's munic...

That's the title of a paper recently posted by Daniel Cole . The abstract: Economists and legal scholars have known for decades that "economic instruments," including cap-and-trade regimes and effluent taxes, can reduce emissions at lower cost than command-and-control regulations. Yet, the US system of environmental law remains heavily dominated by command-and-control. How can we explain this remarkable persistence? This paper considers three alternative explanations: (1) path-dependency; (2) public choice theories of interest-group politics; and (3) social-welfare/economic efficiency. Using examples, mainly from the US Clean Air Act, the paper finds that none of the three alternatives offers a sufficient and complete explanation of the persistence of command-and-control. But all three contribute significantly to a comprehensive explanation.

(Sorry for the long silence, I've been busy with some other things. As always, if you're interested in contributing posts to the blog, I'd be more than happy to help! In the meantime:) Sarah Milov (a co-founder of this blog) recently published a piece in the Washington Post on the history of grass-roots anti-tobacco campaigns that might serve as a model for climate activism today. Some highlights: Activists won the fight against tobacco by working on the local, not national, level. Neither the Occupational Safety & Health Agency nor the Environmental Protection Agency regulate secondhand smoke. Congress has never passed a Non-Smokers’ Rights Act . Instead, 41 states and 1,354 cities have enacted laws to protect the health of citizens. They did so in response to the sustained activism of men and women who argued that the government was not doing enough to protect their rights. ***** In 1973, the dogged efforts of Betty Carnes, a sexagenarian amateur ornithologist, resul...

Youngstown Sheet and Tube Company’s Campbell Works, Youngstown, Ohio (c. 1960) Ohio Valley History  recently published Allen Dieterich-Ward's "'We’ve Got Jobs. Let’s Fight for Them': Coal, Clean Air, and the Politics of Antienvironmentalism" . From the introduction (notes omitted): Narrating the history of the environmental opposition has grown in importance over the past four decades as the rapid expansion of environmental laws gave way to a conservative antienvironmental movement determined to roll back policies seen as challenging older legal imperatives and in conflict with economic goals. Since the 1980s, first journalists and then historians have focused on the back and forth of environmental policymaking. The basic narrative is of an environmental backlash, which began in the mid-1970s in western states—the Sage Brush Rebellion that formed one of the conservative pillars in Reagan’s coalition. By the 1990s, protests over tightening federal land regulations ...