The Ninth Circuit’s recent Berman decision looks to be even more of a game-changer after a federal district court in California relied on it to hold that widely-used clickwrap “continued-use” provisions allowing companies to amend their terms of service at will, and binding consumers to the amended terms merely by their continued use of the service, will not be enforced
Rising sea levels, devastating wildfires, and prolonged drought: the impact of climate change in California is noticeable. One way to mitigate the effects of climate change is to decrease greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, particularly carbon dioxide, which accounts for most of the nation’s emissions according to the Environmental Protection Agency.
Consumers are often encouraged to decrease their carbon footprint by
Let’s say that it’s time to make your mortgage payment, but too late for you to send payment by check. Your mortgage servicer offers helpful alternatives — you can pay by phone or via its online website. But it charges a fee for the convenience — say, $5 to pay online, and $10 to pay by phone. Generally, such “convenience
Over 50 Bay Area restaurants and wineries served Gov. Gavin Newsom with a lawsuit Tuesday asking that he take back his order for regional bans on outdoor dining. The class action suit brought by the Wine Country Coalition for Safe Reopening seeks to enjoin Newsom’s December ban on outdoor dining and wine tasting. Public Health Director Tomás J. Aragón is
In my last post on conservation land development, I discussed a cost concept—negative externalities.[1] In this post, I cover a benefit concept—ecosystem services.
Third Key Term: Ecosystem Services
The third conservation land development term a legal professional should master—ecosystem services—is a dual ecology and economic concept.
Ecosystems are defined as a dynamic complex of plant, animal, and microorganism
California, along with 45 other states, the District of Columbia, and Guam, filed a federal antitrust lawsuit against Facebook on Wednesday, claiming the social media giant maintains a monopoly in the U.S. by purchasing emerging competitors, which degrades the quality and variety of users’ social networking experiences and privacy options.
The 48 attorneys general claim in the suit, filed in
Residential land development provides many economic and social benefits to society. Most economic costs are factored into and paid by residential land developers (as the producer of the economic good) during the residential land development process. However, residential land development also comes with costs to the ecosystems on which it is built that are not included as a cost incurred
The first conservation land development term a legal professional should grasp is an economic one: market failure.
The Importance of Conservation Land Development Terminology
Fully grasping conservation land development terminology, such as market failure, starts with the context in which conservation land development principles are applied: the economy. The economic marketplace and government are society’s two primary mechanisms for coordinating
As an interdisciplinary specialty, conservation land development requires integrating knowledge and methods from different disciplines and then harmonizing links between the disciplines into a coordinated and coherent whole. Among those disciplines, ecology and economic principles unconsciously can be minimized during the crafting and implementation of conservation land development projects, in favor of an overemphasis on-site planning and landscape architecture. That
This post advocates greater consideration of conservation development techniques at the wildland-housing interface in California’s fire-prone areas to reduce housing destruction risk. For land use planning to become more effective in mitigating fire destruction risk, it needs to be based on a comprehensive understanding of where and how to locate and arrange new homes within the landscape they are placed.
