Lima Agreement, Return from China, Cruden Confirmation, Oil Spill in Negev Desert, Letter to Post (by Bob Percival)

On December 15 representations from more than 190 nations meeting in Lima, Peru reached agreement on a blueprint for next year’s Paris COP-21 where it is expected that a new global climate change treaty will be adopted.  The agreement was reached only after the COP was extended for two days and its language was watered down somewhat.  But many observers believe that it is better than nothing and paves the way for more significant action in Paris next year.  A copy of the agreement “Further Advancing the Durban Platform” is available online at: http://unfccc.int/files/meetings/lima_dec_2014/in-session/application/pdf/cpl14.pdf

I returned from China on December 20.  On December 15 I gave a talk at Shanghai Institute of Politics and Law on “Using Law to Protect the Environment.”  Later in the week Professor Zhao and I had lunch with one of her former students who is now an official with the Shanghai Environmental Protection Board (EPB).  On December 17 Professor Shiguo Liu from Fudan University College of Law hosted me for dinner.

The environmental group Green Stone, who I visited in Nanjing last August during my field trip with the students from my Vermont class, caused quite a stir by posting the names of companies with excessive emissions.  They used data from the new reporting requirements that were mandated by the Chinese government last January.  Green Stone, which initially was founded by university students interested in getting students more active on environmental issues, demanded to know why the local EPBs were not taking enforcement action against these companies.  The Nanjing EPB apparently responded on social media that it would investigate.

Just before adjourning on Tuesday December 16, the U.S. Senate by voice vote confirmed Environmental Law Institute (ELI) President John Cruden to be the Assistant Attorney General for Environment and Natural Resources at the Department of Justice.  When Cruden was nominated by President Obama last February nearly 100 environmental law professors signed on to a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee that I wrote supporting his confirmation. On Monday December 22, ELI held a farewell party for Cruden in the Presidential Suite at the Shoreham Hotel.  At this party I presented John with a resolution of appreciation from the Executive Committee of the American College of Environmental Lawyers (ACOEL).  Noting that the room in which the party was being held was where the Beatles had stayed during their initial visit to D.C., I called John the true “rock star” of environmental law.

Israel is scrambling to clean up a devastating oil spill in the ecologically fragile environment of the Negev Desert.  More than five million liters of crude oil spilled from the Trans Israel Pipeline operated by the Eiliat Ashkelon Pipeline Company (EAPC) earlier this month.  More than 80 people, mostly on the Jordanian side of the Israel/Jordan border, were treated for exposure to the oil and more 13,000 tons of contaminated soil were hauled away. Cleanup crews are working to prevent the spill from reaching the Gulf of Eliat. An Eliat resident has filed a class action lawsuit against EAPC seeking $55 million in damages and cleanup costs.  During spring break in March I will be taking a multi-disciplinary group of students to the Negev as part of a project to work on greywater recycling funded by a global public health grant.

On December 20 the Washington Post published a letter to the editor that I wrote, responding to Congressman Andy Harris’s defense of Congress trying to block D.C.’s voter initiative to legalize marijuana.  My letter is available online at: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v14/n932/a05.html.  It reads as follows:  “How courageous of Republican Reps.  Andy Harris ( Md.  ) and Joe Pitts ( Pa.  ) to answer ‘head-on’ charges that it is hypocritical for proponents of self-government and democracy to overrule the District's marijuana initiative ["Congress's duty trumps D.C.'s vote," op-ed, Dec.  14].  The enormous flaw in their argument that federal interests should trump the will of District residents is that, unlike Mr.  Harris and Mr.  Pitts's constituents in Maryland and Pennsylvania, D.C.  residents have no voice in defining those federal interests because we have no voting representation in Congress. 

If they were men of courage and principle, they would follow in the footsteps of such Republicans as President Dwight D.  Eisenhower and Sen.  Prescott Bush ( father of one Republican president and grandfather of another ), who helped win ratification of the 23rd Amendment giving D.C.  residents the right to vote in presidential elections. d    Granting the District voting representation in Congress would make the incoming Republican majority truly a party of principle.  Until that happens, it is illegitimate for Mr.  Harris and Mr.  Pitts to claim that the will of D.C.  residents should be trumped by a federal interest we are not allowed a voice in defining.” 

In a few hours I am leaving for a National Geographic expedition in Antarctica.  My wife Barbara and I are flying to Buenos Aires today.  On Sunday we will board a charter flight to Ushaia, a place we visited on our honeymoon to Patagonia 30 years ago.  We then will board the Linblad Orion which will sail to the Falkland Islands, South Georgia Island, and then on to Antarctica.  Barbara and I will be celebrating our 30th wedding anniversary on South Georgia Island, where Ernest Shackleton is buried, on January 5.  Before returning to the U.S. on January 24, we also will visit Easter Island, a place I visited in 1973 while sailing around the world prior to starting law school.