Energy Policy and Property

Some interesting property issues in this recent Weekly Standard piece by Irwin Stelzer:

Looking Green, Feeling Blue
Environmentalist dreams collide with economic reality.
by Irwin M. Stelzer
01/27/2009 12:00:00 AM

The environmentalists, or at least some of them, have fired a warning shot across the bow of Obama's mighty ship of state as it sails "to the shores of need, past the reefs of greed," as Leonard Cohen's perversion of Wordsworth would have it. They have expressed extreme unhappiness with the failure of the stimulus package to include many of the 800 items they had hoped to see in it when they sat down in their office to unwrap it. There is, from the green point of view, worse. During the campaign and the transition Joe Biden promised that there would be no more coal plants built in the United States; greener-than-green Henry Waxman wrested the chairmanship of the House Energy and Commerce Committee from the sensible John Dingell; Carol Browner, "an acolyte of former Vice President Al Gore", according to the New York Times, was named White House coordinator of energy and climate policy (aka "czar"); Harvard University physicist John Holdren, a long-time advocate of measures to combat climate change was picked to be the President's science adviser; and Steven Chu, the Nobel prize-winning physicist and advocate of biofuels and solar power, was named to be Secretary of Energy. There are others, all of this green persuasion, all able, all darlings of the environmental movement, all expected to favor sun and wind over nuclear and coal. So far, so green. But responsibility brings with it doubts, and politics in the form of Democratic senators from coal-producing states brings with it moderation. So environmentalists were horrified when Dr. Chu told senators during his confirmation hearings that he planned to fast-track the development of nuclear plants, accept oil and gas drilling as part of an overall energy package, and would support new coal-powered electric-generating plants even before research into "clean coal" technology bears fruit. So here we are. Lots of talk about smart grids, solar and wind power, lots of environmentalist appointees -- and an administration still groping for an energy policy that is feasible -- allows for a sufficient increase in the supply of energy to sustain economic growth while at the same time reducing the emission of greenhouse gasses. This means that it is an administration that will soon be at war with part of the environmental movement, and learn that although it controls the White House and the congress, it cannot control environmentalists' use of the courts to stall and in many case kill the development of new sources of energy. Various environmental groups have already used the courts to force the cancellation of over 50 coal plants. They have used the courts to prevent the opening of the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository. Local groups in the not-in-my-backyard camp have used the courts to prevent the construction of wind farms, with the Kennedy-led opposition to Cape Wind, the project within sight of their Hyannis Port compound, the most famous. And they are increasingly concerned about the amount of land needed for large-scale solar installations. There is an additional obstacle to the new President's realization of his 25-25 goal: 25 percent of the nation's power to come from renewable sources by 2025. People do not tend to live in windy places, a few hardy Scots being the exception. Nor do they tend to seek out homes in the desert, unless, of course, they can have access to huge amounts of electricity to run super-sized, energy-guzzling air conditioning systems. In short, renewable sources of energy are remote from the population centers where that energy is needed. Which means that large, high-voltage transmission lines must be built from wind farms and solar sites to major cities, often across beautiful parts of states such as Virginia and Maryland. The enthusiasm of homeowners in those states for views of transmission towers is limited, to say the least. Michael Morris, CEO of American Electric Power, estimates that to supply 20 percent of the nation's electricity needs with wind by 2030 will require the construction of 19,000 circuit miles of extra-high-voltage transmission. Unless the Obama team is willing to use the right of eminent domain to over-ride all objections from local environmental groups, in the process antagonizing millions of voters, those transmission lines will never get built. Or built only after a 6-year long permitting process, the current average according to Morris. So, back to coal and nuclear. I would like to be a fly on the wall when Larry Summers explains these ugly facts of energy-sector life, the necessity for tradeoffs, to Ms. Browner and her colleagues. Or when Summers explains to the president that only a tax on carbon, to be offset by a cut in payroll taxes, can set the stage for efficient investment in renewables, and a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions that is not also a reduction in the overall efficiency of the economy. Irwin M. Stelzer is a contributing editor to THE WEEKLY STANDARD, director of economic policy studies at the Hudson Institute, and a columnist for the Sunday Times (London).

Another Great Ben Franklin Quotation For Our Times

"Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote."

"Stern on the Legal Mythology of Home"

This post from PropertyProf blog has special relevance as we discuss issues of exclusionary single-family zoning laws:

Stephanie Stern (Loyola Chicago) has posted Residential Protectionism and the Legal Mythology of Home on SSRN. Here's the abstract:

Residential real estate has achieved an exalted status and privileged position in American property law. The notion of the home as a special object deserving heightened protection is widely accepted within the case law and scholarship. Influential scholars, most notably Margaret Radin, have argued that the home is critical for an individual's very identity and ability to flourish in society. Other commentators have expounded a communitarian vision of the home as rooting individuals in communities of close-knit social ties. Over the past century, there has been a proliferation of legislation creating special protections for owners of residential real estate such as homestead exemptions, tenancy by the entirety, property tax relief, and more recently foreclosure relief and state eminent domain legislation shielding residential real estate. This type of legislation imposes a variety of social costs including raising the cost of credit, skewing housing prices and incentivizing over-investment, and forcing less affluent homeowners to subsidize more affluent homeowners through regressive measures. One motivation for residential protection legislation is the desire to protect the special values attributed to the home, especially for families. More often, the impetus for such legislation is rent-seeking by special interest groups, competition between states to attract residents, actions by local home voters who attempt to externalize costs across localities, or grandstanding by politicians anxious to capitalize on the evocative chord of home protection. The belief that homes play a critical and irreplaceable role in the lives of individuals and families has provided a gloss of moral legitimacy to rent-seeking and greased the wheels of the residential protectionism machine. It is time for a critical reexamination of the importance attributed to the home. Drawing on the research literature in psychology, sociology, and demographics this paper argues that there is scant evidence to support a categorical theory of the home as a special object that constitutes individual identity or enables a rich web of social interactions. The psychology research illustrates the importance of social interaction and relationships (not possessions) for human functioning while the demographic research indicates that closely-knit, low-turnover, territorial neighborhoods are the exception, not the norm.

Class Schedule--No Class Friday February 6

The first of our 7 required cancellations will be Friday February 6, President Ronald Wilson Reagan's Birthday (February 6, 1911).

This would be a good day to schedule job interviews. Mark your calendars.

It was Mel Gibson's Braveheart, not the Gipper, who said this, but it captures the spirit of Reagan and of liberty:

"Fight and you may die. Run and you will live, at least
awhile. And dying in your bed many years from now, would you be
willing to trade all the days from this day to that, for one
chance to come back here as young men, and tell our enemies
that they make take our lives, but they will never take our freedom?"

Religious Land Use: A Global Perspective

Some of you may find this Religion Clause blog post of interest:

Burma Orders Christians and Muslims To End Worship Services In Private Apartments

In the heavily Buddhist country of Burma, both Christians and Muslims were ordered last week to stop holding religious services in residential apartments. Mizzima reported on Wednesday that in Rangoon, the Kyauktada Township Peace and Development Council held a meeting with nearly 50 church leaders last Monday to deliver their demand. The use of apartments for services has grown since authorities stopped issuing permits in the 1990's for churches to buy lands and construct buildings. According to a subsequent report by Mizzima, Muslim leaders were separately summoned by authorities on Monday and similarly ordered to stop holding worship services in private apartments. The unavailability of government permits to build mosques has led to use of private venues for worship.

"Supreme Court Review Sought In RLUIPA Case"

From Religion Clause blog:

Supreme Court Review Sought In RLUIPA Case

According to the Longmont (CO) Times Call, a petition for certiorari was filed with the U.S. Supreme Court last week in Rocky Mountain Christian Church v. Board of Commissioners of Boulder County, Colorado.  In the case, the 10th Circuit upheld a jury's determination that denial of a special use permit to a church violated the equal terms and unreasonable limitations provisions of RLUIPA. (See prior posting.) The 10th Circuit subsequently denied a rehearing after making minor changes in its original opinion. (See prior posting.)

December 2008 Mid-year Exercise Results

Here is the breakdown for the Midyear Exercise:

2 Students scored 100 points

9 Students scored 96 points

11 Students scored 92 points

7 Students scored 88 points

9 Students scored 84 points

6 Students scored 80 points

7 Students scored 76 points

5 Student scored 72 points

5 Student scored 68 points

2 Students scored 64 points

2 Students scored 60 points

4 Students scored 56 points

5 Students scored 52 points

1 Student scored 48 points

2 Students scored 44 points

The test median was 80 points

The average score was 78.28

This was good work. More than half of you scored above 80% on this short exercise.

As I said in class, don't read too much into your performance on the mid-term exercise. The final will count for 300 points, and things could change a lot based upon your performance on the final. Be neither discouraged nor overconfident.

Also, please ignore the "quartile" rankings that the Law College will provide pursuant to a new faculty rule. I consider these quartiles arbitrary at this point in the course, because I simply don't have enough data to make any judgment about your relative ranking in the class. I divided the scores into quartiles only because I was required to do so. As far as I am concerned in my professional judgment, everyone is presently in the first quartile.

I am generally pleased with the perfomance of the class as a whole.

Have a great break and come back ready to have a great second semester.