What could court’s decision in Looper mean for regulated communities?
Chevron Overruled: Understanding the Supreme Court’s Decision in Loper Bright/Relentless and What it Could Mean For Regulated Communities
The Supreme Court has now handed down its decisions in Loper Bright v. Raimondo and Relentless, Inc. v. Dep’t of Commerce in which the Court overruled the Chevron doctrine, the longstanding rule requiring courts to defer to agencies’ reasonable interpretations of ambiguous statutes.
The potential ramifications of the Supreme Court’s decision are sweeping and will affect how regulated parties interact with lawmakers, comment on rules, and develop litigation strategies regarding agency action.
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In California, CBS looks at how the site of past environmental disasters could be a key to America’s clean energy future. Then in Florida, it explores restoration efforts to reverse years of devastation in the Everglades. Watch these stories and more on Eye on America with host Michelle Miller.
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Ed Stier, a former federal and New Jersey state prosecutor specializing in complex organized crime and corruption prosecutions, gives more expert insight on George Norcross’ 111-page indictment.
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At least 1,200 people in California were evacuated this weekend as a wildfire in Los Angeles County spread over thousands of remote mountain acres, officials said.
As of late Sunday morning, the fire had spread across more than 12,200 acres, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection said on its website. The blaze also damaged two commercial structures, fire officials said.
At 9 a.m. local time, the Los Angeles County Fire Department announced that the fire was just 2 percent contained.
The National Weather Service office in Los Angeles issued a red flag warning for the Interstate 5 corridor in Los Angeles County and Ventura County due to strong winds and low humidity.
Officials said they’re investigating what caused the fire and haven’t reported fatalities or injuries.
The blaze, which officials are calling the Post Fire, started about 1:45 p.m. Saturday in Gorman, about 65 miles northwest of downtown Los Angeles, according to state fire officials. It then moved southeast, toward Pyramid Lake.
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This summer might be a buggy one. As many as one trillion cicadas are emerging in the United States, spotted lanternflies are back and now scientists are predicting the arrival in the Northeast of a newcomer: the joro spider.
It’s unclear when exactly the joro, a large, brightly colored spider, will make its way to the Northeast. And there are some silver linings: There won’t be millions of them, and they eat other pests, including spotted lanternflies, which officials have urged New Yorkers to kill on sight.
Here’s what to know about these spider invaders.
How large are we talking about?
These spiders are big, about the size of a Post-it note or a stretched-out human hand, and have long legs, said José R. Ramírez-Garofalo, an ecologist at Rutgers University. The female spiders can grow up to eight inches long, while the males are roughly half that size, he said.
They can fly, sort of: They move through the air by shooting silk threads that catch the wind, and the air currents carry them along, although not very far. They also travel on cars and trucks.
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PA Gov. Josh Shapiro beats the drum for the Philadelphia Union soccer team
By Stephen Caruso and Angela Couloumbis, Spotlight PA|
HARRISBURG — A nonprofit that does not publicly disclose its donors paid more than $12,000 last year for Gov. Josh Shapiro to attend sporting events. The secrecy leaves taxpayers in the dark about who underwrites the outings and what interests they may have in state government policy.
The money also raises questions about whether the Democrat is violating his ban on accepting gifts.
Shapiro reported receiving $12,194.62 from Team PA for “transportation, lodging or hospitality” on his newly filed statement of financial interest. The Harrisburg-based nonprofit bills itself as a public-private partnership to bolster Pennsylvania’s economic development; its “investors” include a cross-section of the state’s top business industries, according to an annual report.
On the form, Shapiro did not describe what Team PA paid for, writing only: “The governor in his official capacity attended various events for the benefit of the Commonwealth to promote Pennsylvania and its economic interests.”
In an email, Shapiro spokesperson Manuel Bonder said Team PA paid for the Democratic governor to attend six sporting events: the 2023 Super Bowl in Arizona and games played by the Harrisburg Senators, Penn State’s football team, Philadelphia Phillies, and Philadelphia Union.
Bonder added that Shapiro was often invited to these games by the teams, and used the time to greet fans, cheer the teams on, and network with business or legislative leaders who were also in attendance.
The money for those tickets came from a little-known fund that Team PA manages called Pennsylvania Growth Partnership, which accepts donations exclusively to promote the governor — and by extension, the commonwealth and its economic health — on a national and international stage.
It’s not publicly known which individuals, groups, or businesses have donated to the growth partnership fund. Nonprofits are required to file detailed annual reports to the Internal Revenue Service that list, among other things, revenue and expense totals. But they aren’t required to make the names of their donors public.
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The state Board of Public Utilities Wednesday approved more than 300 megawatts of solar projects across the state, a big step boosting one of New Jersey’s most important sources of renewable energy and a key component of Gov. Phil Murphy’s clean-energy agenda.
In a solicitation overseen by the BPU, commissioners quickly approved eight projects across seven counties. That outcome marks a complete reversal of a similar proceeding last summer when the agency rejected all bids that had been submitted because they were deemed too expensive.
In Wednesday’s meeting, the board approved eight of 14 bids submitted by developers as well as a project to build 80 megawatts of energy storage capacity, believed to be the largest project of its kind to move forward in New Jersey.
Welcome news for developers, advocates
There was little comment by the board on its vote, but solar developers and clean-energy advocates were thrilled with the decision.
“Overall, I’m pleasantly surprised,’’ said Fred DeSanti, executive director of the New Jersey Solar Energy Coalition. “This is a signal that the New Jersey grid-supply market is very strong.’’
Most of the approvals were for grid supply projects, which are solar systems that are much more cost-effective because of their scale and thus are less expensive to utility customers who wind up supporting the projects on their monthly bills through incentives to the developers.
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Summary of Important Dates Upcoming EJ Law Hearings
Announcements EPA Announces New Federal Drinking Water Standards on PFAS On April 10th, the Biden-Harris Administration issued the first-ever national, legally enforceable drinking water standard to protect communities from exposure to harmful per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), also known as ‘forever chemicals.’ Exposure to PFAS has been linked to deadly cancers, impacts to the liver and heart, and immune and developmental damage to infants and children, disproportionately affecting public health in overburdened communities.
Murphy Administration Awards $16 Million in Grants to Advance Recycling and Waste Reduction Goals Over $16 Million in grants have been awarded to communities to NJ counties to fund recycling initiatives. The award amounts for each municipality are based on recycling performance in recent years, incentivizing more sustainable waste management for all municipalities and furthering existing projects. Some municipal project ideas include sponsoring household hazardous waste collection events, providing recycling receptacles in public places, and maintaining leaf composting operations.
Overburdened Communities across the state were able to take advantage of this opportunity including Newark, Camden, Perth Amboy, and Paterson.
Updates on Resilient NJ’s Municipal Assistance Program Resilient NJ’s Municipal Assistance Program (MAP) provides municipalities with climate change-related hazard vulnerability assessments and resilience action plans, used by municipal governments to advance resilience efforts. The recently completed inaugural round of MAP projects include Ocean Township, Stafford Township, and Upper Township. A second round of projects, expected to launch in 2024, include the Town of Harrison, the City of Lambertville, and Montclair Township.
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A farmer spreads nitrogen fertilizer on a wheat field in France. Three potent greenhouse gases, nitrogen, and methane, are closely linked to climate change. Photo: Pascal Rossignol/Reuters
By David Gelles, NY Times Climate Forward, April 9, 2024
The extreme weather. The melting glaciers. The weirdly warm oceans. They’re all the product of global warming, which is being driven by the release of the three most important heat-trapping gases: carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide.
Global average carbon dioxide concentrations jumped last year, “extending the highest sustained rate of CO2 increases” in NOAA’s 65 years of record-keeping. Methane and nitrous oxide levels also rose sharply last year. All this despite a wave of global policy measures and economic incentives designed to wean the world off fossil fuels.
These weren’t just one-off anomalies. In each case, the rising emissions continued a long-term trend. By analyzing more than 15,000 air samples from around the world, NOAA found that the upticks in emissions last year “were in line with the steep increases observed during the past decade.”
The result has been a series of profound changes to the planet in a remarkably short amount of time. “The amount of CO2 in the atmosphere today is comparable to where it was around 4.3 million years ago during the mid-Pliocene epoch,” the NOAA report found. That was when the “sea level was about 75 feet higher than today” and “large forests occupied areas of the Arctic that are now tundra.”
Carbon dioxide
Last year, humans spewed some 36.6 billion tons of CO2 into the atmosphere, the most ever. That number may well be higher this year.
The concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is now more than 50 percent higher than it was before the Industrial Revolution.
It’s no secret where all this carbon dioxide is coming from. The burning of oil, coal, and gas is the main source of CO2 emissions, and the use and production of fossil fuels continue to rise around the world, with the United States producing more oil and gas than ever before.
And even as the build-out of renewable energy is speeding up, the appetite for fossil fuels remains strong, in part because overall energy demand is soaring.
Fossil fuels aren’t the only source of carbon dioxide. The extraordinary forest fires that have charred Canada, Europe and Chile over the past year are also adding CO2 into the atmosphere. Yet even there, the vicious cycle of human-caused climate change is easy to see: Many of those fires were made worse because of the warming that has already occurred.
Methane
For a while, it looked like methane emissions were slowing down. After a rapid rise in atmospheric methane concentration during the 1980s, levels stabilized in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Then in 2007, they started rising again, and fast.
Last year saw the fifth-highest-ever jump in methane concentration since record-keeping began, and methane levels are now more than 160 percent higher than they were before the Industrial Revolution, according to NOAA. Methane is a particularly potent greenhouse gas; while it breaks down faster than carbon dioxide, it is more powerful at trapping heat in the atmosphere.
The vast majority of the increased methane emissions can be traced back to humanity’s insatiable appetite. Agriculture is the biggest source of methane emissions, according to the International Energy Agency, followed closely by the burning of fossil fuels.
Nitrous oxide
While carbon dioxide and methane are the two gases most commonly associated with climate change, nitrous oxide is another potent heat-trapping gas, and is also on the rise.
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Cosmetics and personal care products in which PFAS historically have been used include foundation; blush and highlighter; eyebrow products; eye makeup (mascara and other lash products, eyeshadow, eye cream); moisturizers, cleansers, and other creams and lotions; shampoo and hair conditioner; lipstick and lip balm; nail polish; sunscreen; shaving cream; and dental floss.
Intentionally added PFAS may appear on a product’s ingredient list, but not always. Some PFAS may be present in cosmetics unintentionally as the result of raw material impurities, contamination from processing equipment, carryover from processing aids, or the breakdown of other, intentionally added, PFAS ingredients.
The Modernization of Cosmetics Regulation Act of 2022 (MoCRA) requires the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to assess the safety of PFAS in cosmetics and publish its results by the end of 2025.
In the meantime, however, seven states have taken matters into their own hands, enacting laws that ban or restrict the use of PFAS — usually all PFAS but occasionally a few specific PFAS — in cosmetics and other personal care products.
In general, they ban the manufacture, sale, distribution for sale, or offering for sale of such products to which PFAS have been intentionally addedto provide a specific characteristic or perform a specific function in that product.
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