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The Clean Air Act (CAA) has delivered enormous pollution reductions in its almost fifty-year history, produced huge health benefits, and saved thousands of lives. Its ambient focus has led to the almost complete elimination of lead and dramatic drops in the other pollutants it regulates. Nevertheless, the CAA has a major blind spot: small "microclimates" that contain levels of deadly pollutants that can far exceed federal standards. These hotspots contain pollutants that exacerbate asthma, increase respiratory and cardiac deaths, may cause developmental problems in children, and increase cancer risks. The most prevalent of these pollution hotspots occur in predictable patterns around heavily trafficked roads and industrial facilities. Low-income communities and communities of color are much more likely to live in polluted microclimates and suffer health effects as a result. This Article argues that the ambient focus of the CAA, which requires the monitoring and regulation of large air districts to produce background levels of pollution that meet stringent federal standards, actually masks pollution hotspots. Residents who live in air districts that receive the imprimatur of "attainment" under the CAA may nevertheless experience air quality that is considerably worse than federal air standards. Paradoxically, residents of air districts that are out of attainment, even with extreme designations, may be breathing background air that is cleaner than residents in attainment zones who are exposed to hotspot pollution. Our regulatory system helps shape our understanding of health and safety risks, in other words, in ways that are inconsistent with scientific reality. Unfortunately, using the traditional CAA mechanisms, primarily the National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS), to regulate conventional pollutants is an awkward fit for hotspot pollution. States are the primary regulators of these pollutants, yet they have little authority over the biggest causes of hotspot pollution: cars, heavy-duty trucks, and other vehicles. Nevertheless, the Article offers suggestions for how states and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) may be able to address microclimate pollution using existing statutory authority. Indeed the most effective strategy for dramatically reducing hotspot pollution, electrifying the transportation fleet, also happens to be one of the most effective ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Recognizing the immediate health benefits that greening the fleet would deliver could make action on climate change mitigation more palatable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Decarbonizing the electric power sector will be central to any serious effort to fight climate change. Many observers have suggested that the congressional failure to enact a uniform system of electricity regulation could stifle the transition to a low-carbon electricity grid. This Article contends that the critique is overstated. In fact, innovation is occurring across different aspects of the electricity system and across different types of states in ways one would not expect to see under a single, national approach. As the Article demonstrates, this innovation stems in part from Congress's failure to enact a single, national approach to electricity regulation, which has given states the ability to choose whether and how to participate in restructured electricity markets. This ability to opt into or out of wholesale and retail competition has resulted in three regulatory models now operating across the country, combining different approaches to wholesale and retail regulation. Under each of these models, a number of state public utilities commissions (PUCs) are using their powers to set utility rates in surprisingly innovative ways and are targeting different aspects of the electricity system in a manner that will help transition to an electricity grid that is greener, less carbon-intensive, more efficient, and more distributed than the current system. The Article claims that the diversity of policy innovations occurring across these different models, and the system-wide benefits they are producing, are unexpected outcomes of the distinctive structure of federalism that continues to animate the U.S. system of electricity regulation and the limited reach of policies to promote competition in the sector. When combined with specific federal policy nudges and subsidies to encourage state experimentation in ratemaking, the three-model system is producing significant and underappreciated benefits as the United States confronts the challenges of decarbonizing the electricity grid. While the current system may not be ideal, it is the system we will likely be working with for some time to come. As a result, understanding the nature of these ratemaking experiments, and the innovations they enable, will be key to the successful implementation of EPA's Clean Power Plan or any other federal effort to cut greenhouse gas emissions from the power sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information on the judicial decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in the case of Utility Air Regulatory Group v. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and EPA v. EME Homer City Generation related to EPA's climatic regulation and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reduction program. It also that the Court reviewed the ruling in the Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council regarding agency's interpretation as of the environmental protection program.

Common accounts of federalism and preemption do not envision states as supreme. According to the conventional view, states may share regulatory space with the federal government, carry out federal programs, or operate independently and even exclusively. But in two provisions in federal law, states play a role of supremacy: they are given extraordinary power--what we call "reverse preemption "--to veto federal agency decisions that conflict with state policy. One provision allows states to override federal actions that conflict with state coastal management; another gives states the power to reverse or condition federal licensing decisions that impede state water quality goals. We examine these reverse preemption provisions in this Article and explore their ramifications. We suggest that reverse preemption provisions enhance the power of states with strong environmental preferences through an unexpected form of federalism. We describe the ways in which the provisions allow Congress to check executive branch decision making that could undermine environmental protection, particularly when Congress and the Presidency are held by different political parties. Thus, reverse preemption provisions play an important function in bolstering separation of powers values. Finally, we explore reverse preemption as a mechanism for checking agency capture by regulated parties and make preliminary suggestions for the use of reverse preemption provisions in other policy areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although the U.S. energy system seems to resist the changes necessary to meet today's challenges related to energy security and climate change, the system has gone through massive change several times since 1850. A major driver in each of these earlier transitions was an economic value, such as mobility, that markets could capture. Because environmental and security values are public goods, changing today's energy system will require a policy that creates a market signal reflecting these values. However, it is also necessary to craft a policy framework that is both durable over a long time period and able to adapt to new information as it becomes available. This essay examines some of the possible attributes of a durable and adaptable policy. The discussion is necessarily preliminary because relatively little formal research exists on this topic. However, even a preliminary examination suggests that considerations of policy durability could affect the choice between a carbon tax and a cap-and-trade system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tourism imposes costs and benefits on wild primates. Endangered black howler monkey ( Alouatta pigra) troops with high exposure to tourism had higher levels of botfly ( Alouattamyia baeri) parasitism. Edge habitat and juvenile numbers did not seem to confound the observed relationship. To improve the cost/benefit ratio of tourism, we recommend further investigation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, I analyze a difficult and surprisingly under-examined issue about how to reduce greenhouse gas emissions most effectively at the lowest cost. If policy-makers commit to using cap-and-trade as a central regulatory mechanism--the dominant policy choice to date--to what extent should they also adopt regulatory programs that contain more traditional direct regulation? Cap-and-trade is by definition designed to harness market forces to allow polluters to make choices about whether and how they will reduce their own emissions or trade for a right to emit more while another polluter cuts emissions more dramatically. Complementary policies, by contrast, designate in advance how greenhouse gases ("GHGs") must be reduced and the sources from which these reductions must come. While complementary policies can effectively reduce emissions, they also constrain the market options available under cap-and-trade by limiting the choices emitters have about how to reduce their emissions. That constraint can lead to higher compliance costs. Though policymakers may enact complementary policies for reasons other than greenhouse gas emissions reduction, if the goal is solely to reduce greenhouse gases most cost-effectively, cap-and-trade alone is a better choice in a well-functioning market. However, if systematic market failures prevent emitters subject to a cap-and-trade system from choosing the lowest cost compliance options, then, from a climate policy perspective, complementary policies to correct the market failure make sense. Energy efficiency measures are one example of a complementary policy that corrects such a market failure. If no market failure exists, policymakers should recognize the trade-off inherent in limiting the market mechanisms cap-and-trade is designed to promote and evaluate whether ancillary benefits justify the reduction in market flexibility and the potentially higher costs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a study which investigated the occurrence of osteopenia as a result of enhanced osteoclastogenesis in twisted gastrulation(TWSG1)-deficient mice using increased bone morphogenetic proteins (BMP) signaling. It is stated that bone tissue deterioration resulted in increased bone fragility, bone pain and periodontal bone loss. The findings of primary osteoblast cultures and dynamic histomorphometric analysis are discussed.

Our almost forty-year experience with land mark federal environmental statutes, demonstrates unequivocally that implementing grand and noble environmental goals is an arduous and difficult experience. California is now embarking on a similar project: implementing the country's most ambitious greenhouse gas emissions limitations, including rolling back the state's emissions to 1990 levels by 2020. The state's leadership on climate change legislation deserves significant praise. But the hard work in actually achieving emissions limits is just beginning. In this Essay, Professor Ann Carlson provides a case study of the country's largest municipally owned utility--the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (DWP)--and the challenges it will face in holding its emissions to 1990 levels by 2020. The case study is particularly useful to anticipate challenges utilities across the country will face if the federal government also mandates greenhouse gas emissions reductions. The DWP's energy mix, with its heavy reliance on coal, looks quite similar to the energy mix of the country as a whole (and quite different from the rest of California's electricity market). The challenges are daunting. They include shifting rapidly to renewable energy sources in the face of labor pressures to have DWP own its own sources; building miles of transmission lines to bring the renewable energy to DWP's customer base; repowering natural gas facilities while attempting to comply with stringent Clean Water Act requirements; and eliminating the utility's reliance on coal over the next two decades. These efforts will raise complex environmental arid other value clashes, pitting those concerned about jobs, water pollution, species protection, and aesthetic harms against a utility admirably committed to cutting its greenhouse gas emissions significantly. Whether arid how we resolve these clashes remains an open and contested question. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses several issues related to heat waves, global warming, and mitigation. If the projections on climate change are accurate then the annual death rates from heat waves remain largely invisible to the general public and policy makers in the U.S. The most common reasons that caused the public and policymakers to underestimate the risk of excess heat include the lack of property damage heat waves create, the nature of the victims, and cognitive mechanisms to avoid high numbers of heat-wave deaths.

Parathyroid hormone (PTH) exerts biphasic effects on bone, dependent on the frequency and dose of administration. The catabolic actions of PTH on bone have been associated with continuous treatment, an increase in osteoblast-mediated resorption of bone via osteoclast activation, and inhibition of osteoblast activity and mineralization. Downregulation of differentiation markers and inhibition of mineralization by PTH have been reported in primary calvarial explants and osteoblast cell lines. Using MC3T3-E1 osteoblast-like cells, we have shown that matrix Gla protein (MGP) can be induced by PTH, and that this induction may explain the PTH-mediated inhibition of osteoblast biomineralization. MGP is a known inhibitor of mineralization, and mice deficient in Mgp show severe vascular calcification and premature bone mineralization. This review discusses the role of MGP in mineralization, comparing bone and vascular mineralization. In addition to MGP, the regulation and possible role of osteopontin, another known regulator of osteoblast mineralization, in PTH-mediated regulation of bone and vascular mineralization is discussed. Copyright © 2005 S. Karger AG, Basel [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses standing rules in environmental cases in the United States. Standing and the evolution of the injury-in-fact standard; Environmental organizations' inattention to human harm; Philosophical views of the standing inquiry; Case study of the human-centered environmental litigation.