Environmental Law

There’s another, even more challenging gap to address: the California Endangered Species Act, “on its face, does not count habitat of listed species as something that’s protected,” according to Eric Biber, a professor at UC Berkeley Law — though, he added, there’s uncertainty and debate about the law’s interpretation.

“To be really clear, data centers are not bad or good … we use them every day for just about everything we do involving technology,” said Michael Kiparsky, director of the Wheeler Water Institute at the UC Berkeley Center for Law, Energy, & the Environment.

“It’s really unclear right now whether the United States has legal authority to do this, to issue these permits,” said UC Berkeley law school professor Holly Doremus, co-director of the school’s Law of the Sea Institute.

Professor Dan Farber discusses environmental law, climate change, and what happens to environmental law when the federal government turns it’s back on climate action.

Ethan Elkind, director of the climate program at the Center for Law, Energy and the Environment, joins the conversation about how the widening technology gap and lukewarm federal support for clean vehicles threatens the entire U.S. auto industry with obsolescence, and what California is doing about it.

Ethan Elkind, the director of the climate program at UC Berkeley Law’s Center for Law, Energy & the Environment weighs in on the Committee for Affordable Bay Area Transit’s opposition to sales tax measure Connect Bay Area Act.

“California’s boom in data centers places growing demands on stressed water resources,” writeMichael Kiparsky, director of the Wheeler Water Institute at UC Berkeley Law’s Center for Law, Energy & the Environment. and environmental policy research fellow Marie Grimm. “Everyone who uses the internet benefits from data centers. Yet the impacts of data centers are felt most by the communities where these facilities are built and there is no state law controlling their spread.”

Dave Jones, director of Climate Risk Initiative at Berkeley Law’s Center for Law, Energy & the Environment, weighs in on California’s FAIR Plan rate hikes.

“This is the most densely populated corridor west of the Mississippi and it’s the most densely populated part of Los Angeles,” Ethan Elkind, director of the Climate Program at UC Berkeley’s Center for Law, Energy and the Environment, said. “Generally speaking, rail lines are successful when they serve densely populated areas.”

According to Ethan Elkind, Climate Program Director at UC Berkeley Law, even California climate policy, reviled by the right for its supposed extremist quality, has predominately focused on promoting fossil fuel alternatives, like electric vehicles and carbon capture, rather than on confronting the fossil fuel corporations directly.