September has been off to a racing start, as we welcome a new cohort of students and launch our inaugural California environmental legislation and policy clinic . More updates below.

Cara Horowitz , co-executive director, Emmett Institute

Header photo credit: Daniel Melling
Environmental law scholars exchange early-stage ideas 

For the second year in a row, Jim Salzman and the Emmett Institute hosted a two-day workshop for works-in-progress in environmental law at the Bren School of Environment at UC Santa Barbara. Now in its 12th year, the workshop was founded by William Boyd and Sarah Krakoff and hosted for its first 10 years at University of Colorado Law School. Ann Carlson has been a regular participant the last ten years. 

The workshop brings together more than a dozen junior and senior scholars in environmental law from across the country to share current drafts. A number of this year's participants took the opportunity to surf the local waves between sessions.

California Air Resources Board voted this month to endorse the California Tropical Forest Standard, which establishes a set of performance benchmarks for what a high-quality state or provincial approach to reducing deforestation should aim for. 
 
In an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times ahead of the vote, William Boyd urged CARB to endorse the standard. Boyd is project lead for the Governors' Climate and Forests Task Force , a partnership with 38 states and provinces that collaborated with CARB in developing the standard. 

In a blog post this week, Boyd writes "we are making a grave mistake if we assume that tropical deforestation and land use [...] are a relatively modest part of the climate change challenge." Boyd describes the important role of governors and civil servants in protecting tropical forests. Read the post . 

Braving drizzly rain, UCLA Law students Alex Bakes '21 , Melodie Meyer '20 , Matt Simmons '20 , and Andy Su '21 grabbed pitchforks and rakes to help maintain Avalon and Gage Park in Southwest LA. Los Angeles Neighborhood Land Trust hosted the event as part of UCLA's annual Volunteer Day.

LANLT works with communities of color that have little to no access to green space. Beth Kent '18 is the trust's Policy & Legal Fellow. Learn more .

Photo credit: Los Angeles Neighborhood Land Trust
Defending California's clean cars authority

When the Trump administration moved to revoke California’s Clean Air Act waiver on vehicle emissions, Ann Carlson and Julia Stein responded by penning blog posts and fielding media interview requests, arguing the agency announcement was full of falsehoods and the action was on a weak legal footing.

Carlson wrote two blog posts analyzing the EPA and DOT’s proposal and Trump’s tweets, and was interviewed for radio broadcasts on KCRW , KQED , and KPCC , and cited in NPR’s All Things Considered . Carlson was quoted in the Los Angeles Times , Bloomberg , BuzzFeed News , and other outlets. The Washington Post published a feature story on the history of air pollution in Los Angeles, extensively quoting Carlson and including an anecdote from Carlson’s mother’s experience as a teacher in Los Angeles in the 1950s.

Stein published a blog post on the American Constitution Society’s Expert Forum , which was cited in Bloomberg , Vox , CNBC , and CALMatters . Stein was also interviewed and quoted in the Los Angeles Times , San Francisco Chronicle , The Sacramento Bee and Mother Jones .

In a webinar last week, Stein joined experts from Oregon Law and the Institute for Policy Integrity at NYU Law to address law and policy questions on these issues. View a recording .

Photo credit: Scott L, Flickr

Last week, Sean Hecht testified before the U.S. House of Representatives Subcommittee on Coast Guard and Maritime Transportation on the challenges facing the Coast Guard, our ports, and other public agencies as they try to make sure our coastal infrastructure is resilient to emerging risks relating to coastal change. Read Hecht's testimony and see a recording of the hearing .

Also this month, Hecht testified before a California Coastal Commission meeting in Newport Beach, sharing insights on how the insurance industry is responding to sea-level rise impacts on vulnerable neighborhoods in Orange County and along the California coast.
September trivia corner

A new report from the IPCC details impacts of climate change on the world's oceans. In the last hundred years, runoff from mountain glaciers and expansion of seawater as it warmed were the primary drivers of sea-level rise.

What are the two largest contributors to sea-level rise today?

Please send responses to Daniel Melling, melling@law.ucla.edu to win an Emmett Institute notebook!

Congratulations to our previous winners Marjorie Phan and Ryan Vanderli p '20 !

Photo credit: LA Waterkeeper, Flickr

Ann Carlson was interviewed on Meet the Press Daily about lawsuits against fossil fuel companies for damages from climate change.

“Oil companies are fighting tooth and nail to try to get every one of these cases dismissed." Carlson told MSNBC anchor Katy Tur. "One reason is they don’t want to pay the money. A second reason is they don’t want their executives having to testify about what they knew, when they knew it, and what they did about it." Watch the clip .
New faculty publications

Upcoming events and speaking engagements

Emmett Institute faculty are organizing and participating in events and talks over the next few months:

October 17-20, 2019 | Yosemite, CA
Emmett Institute faculty and staff will participate in the annual meeting of California environmental lawyers in Yosemite. Jim Salzman will speak on a panel on recent environmental law developments in the U.S. Supreme Court, Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and California Supreme Court. Sean Hecht will speak on a panel on managing climate change impacts on coastlines. Julia Stein is a member of the California Lawyers Association Environmental Law Section Executive Committee that planned the conference.   Details.

The Governance of Solar Geoengineering: Managing Climate Change in the Anthropocene
November 12, 2019, 12:15 p.m. - 1:30 p.m. | UCLA Law, Room 1447
Jesse Reynolds will share insights from his new book on the governance of geoengineering. Ted Parson will moderate.  Details/RSVP.

Photo credit: Reed Hutchinson
Daniel Melling writes the Emmett Institute newsletter with editing from Sean Hecht and Cara Horowitz. Please send any feedback to melling@law.ucla.edu .
About the Emmett Institute
The Emmett Institute on Climate Change and the Environment is the country's leading law school center focused on climate change and other critical environmental issues. Founded in 2008 with a generous gift from Dan A. Emmett and his family, the Institute works across disciplines to develop and promote research and policy tools useful to decision makers locally, statewide, nationally and beyond. Our Institute serves as a premier source of environmental legal scholarship, nonpartisan expertise, policy analysis and training.   Learn more.