Environmental Law

Legislative Response to Brown A Win for Attorney General, Thelen Lawyer Writes

By Dennis Pfaff and Kevin Livingston, Editors

A California lawyer who has closely followed California's energy regulation, and once was part of it, has concluded that state lawmakers handed Attorney General Jerry Brown a victory last year when they passed a new law in reaction to his controversial greenhouse gas litigation.

The statute  was passed as SB 97 (see full text here). The legislation codifies Brown's argument that that increased emissions of the gases and their effects constitute an environmental impact that must be considered by agencies issuing permits that are subject to review under the California Environmental Quality Act. That's according to Thelen Reid Brown Raysman & Steiner attorney Peter V. Allen (pictured) in an article originally published in  Ecology Law Currents, vol. 35 (2008). The publication is produced at the University of California-Berkeley's law school Boalt Hall (see full article here).

The law was approved last year after Brown sparked controversy in the Legislature by weighing in on county land use and transportation plans and other proposals that warranted scrutiny under the state environmental law. Brown ultimately sued San Bernardino County and reached a settlement requiring the county to take account of greenhouse gases and come up with a plan to reduce them (see text of lawsuit here; text of settlement here; press statement here).

Republicans in the Legislature had held up the state budget and attempted to pass a law limiting Brown's power to bring such lawsuits in the future, a clash that ultimately produced SB 97. Critics viewed Brown's work as a premature effort to enforce the state's law limiting greenhouse emissions, AB 32. Brown, who has maintained the state needs to move forward quickly with efforts to reduce heat-trapping gases, argued that San Bernardino had not adequately analyzed the effects of development on global warming.  

In addition to constituting "a win for the attorney general's position," the bill also will make many CEQA reviews more complex and will require more costly mitigation measures for many projects, Allen wrote. But he noted it should also provide some potential opportunities, especially for renewable energy providers. 

Full post as published by Climate Law Update on April 15, 2008 (boomark / email).