Environmental Law
Envt'l Law News Summer 2015, Vol. 24, No. 1
Content
- 2014-2015 Environmental Law Section Executive Committee
- A New Era: Consultation with California Native American Tribes and Consideration of Tribal Cultural Resources under Ceqa
- California's Efforts to Solve Its Water Shortage: Can They Succeed?
- Editor's Note...
- Environmental Law News Publications Committee
- Is the Endangered Species Act Constitutional? How the Utah Prairie Dog Case May Impact California
- Redevelopment Rewind: a Look at the Current Status of Public and Private Brownfields Redevelopment
- Solar Energy and the Williamson Act: Legal Developments and Recent Trends
- Table of Contents
- The 2014 Environmental Legislative Recap: An Election Year Drought
- The Increasingly Steep Climb to Regulatory Closure for Contaminated Sites
- Where the Rubber Meets the Road: Implementing the Low-Carbon Fuel Standard and Cap-and-Trade for Transportation Fuels to Reduce Carbon Emissions
Where the Rubber Meets the Road: Implementing the Low-Carbon Fuel Standard and Cap-and-Trade for Transportation Fuels to Reduce Carbon Emissions
by William Westerfield* and Anna Leonenko**
INTRODUCTION
Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, and since the 1950s, many of the observed changes are unprecedented over decades to millennia. The atmosphere and ocean have warmed, the amounts of snow and ice have diminished, and sea level has risen.
So begins the Synthesis Report of the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).1 Measurements of the earth’s systems over the last 15 decades lead to the inescapable conclusion that human civilization is warming the planet at an accelerating rate, and these global changes are being observed in California. From 1985 to 2011, statewide average temperatures have increased by 1.7ºF, with the greatest warming measured in the Sierra Nevada.2 Sea level along the California coastline has risen about seven inches over the last century.3