Category: ECONOMICS_CN EXTREME_WEATHER_CN JUDICIAL_CN

A proposed series of sea barriers to protect New York’s harbor—which includes parts of New Jersey— from future storm surges? $52 billion.
Reducing risk of future damage to Rhode Island’s coast? More than $254 million.

Hawaii is looking at “an estimated $30 billion to relocate or elevate state roads and bridges, address impacts to airports, and protect the state’s commercial harbor facilities,” Edward Sniffen, Hawaii’s Department of Transportation (DOT) deputy director for highways, told Congress last year.

A U.S. appeals court on Friday upheld the “social cost of carbon” calculation used by President Joe Biden’s administration, which sharply boosts the price tag policy makers will put on the environmental impact of greenhouse gas emissions from that used by former President Donald Trump.

New Jersey became the latest U.S. state to sue the fossil fuel industry over climate change, alleging it knew for decades that emissions from its products contributed to global warming, but lied to protect its profits and deter efforts to curb greenhouse gases.

he U.S. Supreme Court heard a case this week that could have huge implications for all sorts of state climate regulations, from clean electricity mandates to vehicle fuel standards. But the arguments in court on Tuesday didn’t actually center on the environment. They were about pigs.

Millions of dollars in television advertisements blasting schools for teaching critical race theory and assailing corporations like BlackRock, Uber and American Airlines for catering to “woke politicians.”
A lawsuit pending before the Supreme Court to radically reshape how federal elections are conducted. Complaints against President Biden for violating election law and against school districts that allow information to be withheld from parents about children’s gender identities.

Monday marks the first day of the Supreme Court’s new term, and the justices are wasting no time in weighing another challenge to one of the nation’s bedrock environmental laws.

Scores for the Assembly Democratic conference rose and Senate Democrats dropped slightly from last year in the New York League of Conservation Voters annual scorecard for state lawmakers.

US Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch on Thursday rejected Sunoco LP’s request to block efforts to enforce a $155 million judgment against the fuel retailer in a lawsuit accusing it of failing to pay interest on late payments to 53,000 oil-well owners across Oklahoma .

A federal judge has ruled Canadian energy firm Enbridge Inc. trespassed on Bad River tribal lands and profited at the tribe’s expense but stopped short of shutting down an oil and gas pipeline across the Bad River reservation.
U.S. District Judge William Conley ruled Wednesday that Enbridge was unjustly enriched by continued operation of its Line 5 pipeline on the Bad River reservation, entitling the tribe to a monetary remedy based on the company’s profits. Even so, Conley denied the tribe’s request to immediately shut down the pipeline, saying it would have “significant public and foreign policy implications.”

ExxonMobil Corp must pay a $14.25 million fine over air pollution at its Baytown, Texas crude oil refinery, a federal appeals court affirmed Tuesday. It is the largest penalty ever assessed in a citizen enforcement suit over air pollution, say the plaintiffs’ lawyers.