Parts Per Billion

President Biden's nominee to lead the Securities and Exchange Commission hasn't even been confirmed by the Senate yet. But Bloomberg Law's Andrew Ramonas says the agency may not wait for a permanent leader to begin pushing companies to disclose more climate change information to their investors.

On this episode of our weekly environmental podcast, Parts Per Billion, we hear from Andrew about climate disclosure actions the SEC can take in the coming days and weeks. And Andrew also talks about how environment-minded investors are positively giddy about the policy changes a Biden administration could make.

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A group of big cities are seeking damages from the fossil fuel industry over the costs of climate change. These suits against some of the biggest names in the energy world are taking a very old legal idea—the tort—and trying to adapt it to a new environmental problem.

On this week's episode of our environmental podcast, Parts Per Billion, we hear from two lawyers involved in this litigation, one representing the plaintiffs and the other with the defendants.

Plaintiffs' attorney Katie Jones, with the San Francisco-based firm Sher Edling, talks about the oil and gas companies' role in climate change and why they should be forced to remunerate her clients. And Gibson Dunn's Ted Boutrous, who's defending Chevron in these suits, says the plaintiffs' arguments push the idea of a tort claim way beyond its logical limits.

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A little-known environmental official from the Trump administration made big headlines when it was reported he worked with the President in a failed attempt to oust the acting Attorney General earlier this month in order to bolster baseless claims of election fraud.

The official, Jeffrey Bossert Clark, denied taking any actions against then-acting Attorney General Jeffrey A. Rosen. But Bloomberg Law's Ellen Gilmer says these reports have seriously damaged Clark's career moving forward. For this week's episode of our weekly environmental podcast, Parts Per Billion, we hear from Ellen about how Clark got tied to the effort to delegitimize the election and whether he's now all but unemployable in the legal world.

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The former governor of Michigan, Rick Snyder (R), was hit with criminal charges last week over his role in the drinking water contamination crisis in the town of Flint. He is fighting the case and his attorneys say the charges are "wholly without merit."

Will this usher in a new era where elected officials could be thrown in prison if an environmental catastrophe occurs on their watch? Not likely, says Bob Percival, a law professor at the University of Maryland who leads the school's environmental law program. We spoke to Percival about why prosecutions like Snyder's are so rare for our weekly environmental podcast, Parts Per Billion.

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The Supreme Court has not been shy about wading into some pretty thorny environmental disputes. Including the two cases it took up last week, the justices now have six environmental cases outstanding on their docket.

On this episode of our weekly podcast, Parts Per Billion, we hear from Bloomberg Law's Ellen M. Gilmer, who summarized all of these cases and broke down their individual story lines. She also talks about arguments in a climate change case that the Supreme Court will hear one day before President-elect Biden will officially take office.

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Tucked away in the stimulus bill that the President just signed was nearly half a billion dollars for research into carbon capture technology.

On this episode of our weekly environmental podcast, Parts Per Billion, we hear from Bloomberg Law's Bobby Magill about why this money was added into to the bill, where it will go, and why it probably won't make a significant dent in our climate change problem.

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Invasive Burmese pythons are becoming a real problem in Florida’s everglades, where they have no natural predators and are causing plummeting populations of native species like foxes and rabbits. State wildlife officials have encouraged the hunting of these massive snakes, but the problem still persists.

Now, according to Bloomberg Law correspondent Jennifer Kay, officials are trying a different tack: convincing Sunshine Staters to start eating python meat.

On the latest episode of our weekly environmental podcast, Parts Per Billion, Jennifer explains to us why Florida is getting increasingly desperate to eliminate pythons and whether encouraging Floridians to eat snakes could actually work.

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The Biden administration is staffing up quickly and it seems like there's a new headline almost every day about the President-elect's choice for one cabinet position or another. But less attention is being paid to the lower-level attorneys, even though the new administration's entire environmental agenda largely depends on them.

On this episode of our weekly environmental podcast, Parts Per Billion, we talk to Bloomberg Law's Ellen M. Gilmer about how these regulatory attorneys will be trying to help their agencies win in court and about how the attorneys can avoid getting a reputation as a sort of statutory killjoy.

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Teslas and other electric vehicles may be helping to solve the problem of climate change, but they're also creating a new problem for state and federal transportation budgets. That's because these budgets are funded largely from revenue generated by taxes on gasoline.

But if gas-fueled cars are being phased out, where will funding come from build new roads or even just to maintain existing ones? We posed this question to Sahas Katta, the CEO of an automobile tech startup who is working with several states on developing new ways to tax vehicle use. Katta spoke to Bloomberg Law correspondent Michael Bologna.

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Much of the litigation over toxic PFAS chemicals, at least thus far, has focused on the spraying of PFAS-laden firefighting foam. But now, a new avenue of lawsuits has opened up over the use of PFAS-coated firefighting gear.

Bloomberg Law reporters Andrew Wallender and Fatima Hussein join our weekly environmental podcast, Parts Per Billion, to talk about suits over these jackets, gloves, and other protective equipment. And they also explain why some of the firefighters filing the suits are now at odds with their own firefighting unions.

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