Environmental Law

Ethan Elkind, director of the Climate Program at the Center for Law, Energy and the Environment, UC Berkeley School of Law joins Forum to discuss the impact of big cars.

Ethan Elkind, director of the Center for Law, Energy & the Environment at Berkeley Law weighs in on The California Air Resources Board’s decision to drop its plan to regulate the jet fuel used for 220,000 in-state flights per year.

Professor Daniel Farber comments on the boost in courses focusing on climate change issues at universities.

Professor Holly Doremus weighs in on the possible impact the Chevron decision will have on endangered species.

Ted Lamm, a UC Berkeley Law researcher who studies electric car infrastructure, said the magnitude of building what California needs in coming years likely dwarfs the public funding available.

Heat waves are more predictable than other natural disasters, however. That can make the coverage expensive, compared with just setting aside money to pay for the added costs, said Ted Lamm, associate director of the University of California Berkeley’s Center for Law, Energy & the Environment. 

According to Supervising Attorney in the Environmental Law Clinic at Berkeley Law Steve Castleman, the 2021 retesting found “significant” amounts of contamination that exceeded the cleanup goal of Strontium-90, a radioactive isotope, which he alleges the Navy has since tried to invalidate. 

San Francisco-based Greenaction for Health and Environmental Justice and the UC Berkeley Law Clinic filed the lawsuit Friday, calling for, among other demands, 100% of the land to be retested for radioactive contaminants. They claim the Navy was obligated to do so, but never did.

Berkeley Law’s Environmental Law Clinic. representing a local environmental justice group, filed a lawsuit against the EPA and the Navy over the troubled cleanup of radiological and other contamination at the former Hunters Point Naval Shipyard.

“One of the many policies in California that would be ripe for a legal challenge, without the Chevron doctrine in play, is the state’s zero-emission vehicle and tailpipe standards,” said Ted Lamm, associate director at UC Berkeley School of Law’s Center for Law, Energy & the Environment.