Environmental law

The U.S. Supreme Court is going to hear oral arguments tomorrow about the cross-state feud over pollution, USA Today reports. At issue is the Environmental Protection Agency's rule that "as many as 28 upwind states, mostly in the Midwest and South, ... slash ozone and fine particle emissions for the benefit of their Middle Atlantic and Northeast neighbors," the newspaper reports.

According to USA Today, 24 states want the circuit court ruling striking down the rule upheld by the justices. But nine states and six cities are asking for the rule to be reinstated.

Reuters reports on a trial that ended this week in which Chevron is seeking injunctive relief against a plaintiff's lawyer and some of his clients. Chevron accuses "U.S. lawyer Steven Donziger of orchestrating an international criminal conspiracy by using bribery and fraud in Ecuador to secure a multibillion-dollar pollution judgment against the oil company," according to Reuters. The case resulted in a $18 billion judgment.

But one of Donziger's lawyers, Zoe Littlepage, said "'raw accusations and allegations are not proof. Steven Donziger may be a jerk. That's not a crime,"' according to Reuters.

U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan is presiding over the equity case. Post-trial briefs will be submitted before the judge issues a ruling.

The New York Times reports that the most recent United Nations talks on climate change made some progress: "Delegates agreed to the broad outlines of a proposed system for pledging emissions cuts and gave their support for a new treaty mechanism to tackle the human cost of rising seas, floods, stronger storms and other expected effects of global warming." However, while these climate-change negotiations weren't a Copenhagen fiasco, "treaty members remain far from any serious, concerted action to cut emissions. And developing nations complained that promises of financial help remain unmet," The Times also reports.

Christiana Figueres, the executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, might have broken into tears because the lack of a global agreement on climate change is "condemning future generations before they are even born," BBC reported. But Figueres still said that a deal can be done by 2015 and the pitfalls that doomed the 2009 Copenhagen negotiations for an international climate-change accord could be avoided, BBC also reported.

Reuters reports on a trial opening this week in which Chevron is seeking injunctive relief against a plaintiff's lawyer and some of his clients: "Chevron Corp will try to convince a U.S. judge this week that a group of Ecuadorean villagers and their U.S. lawyer used bribery to win an $18 billion judgment against Chevron from a court in Ecuador, in the latest chapter in a long-running fight over pollution in the Amazon jungle."

The Environmental Protection Agency is going to announce the full details of its plan today to start regulating the amount of carbon emissions new coal and gas power plants can emit. Court challenges by the energy industry are predicted, the Washington Post reports.

A federal judge from the Middle District of Pennsylvania has ruled that the Environmental Protection Agency has the authority to require farmers and developers and others to reduce the amount of pollution entering the Chesapeake Bay watershed upstream from the terrifically polluted bay. The Washington Post reports the six-state effort is one of the most sweeping efforts ever to address pollution.