On August 23, ...

... 1847 (160 years ago today), Sarah Frances Whiting (left) was born in Wyoming, New York. Daughter of a physics teacher, she developed a passion for science early in life. In 1876 she became the 1st Professor of Physics at Wellesley College, a new institution of higher education for women in Massachusetts. Based on what she learned by auditing classes at Harvard that otherwise were closed to women, Whiting assembled a top-rate laboratory at Wellesley; she also built the astronomy observatory at the college, from which she retired in 1912. Whiting was a "foremother of American women physicists," as 1 article put it.
... 1927 (80 years ago today), following years of litigation challenging their convictions for a 1920 double murder, Nicola Sacco, Bartolomeo Vanzetti, and Celestino Madeiros died by execution in Massachusetts' electric chair. The case of Sacco and Vanzetti, anarchists of Italian origin, had become an international cause célèbre, and their execution sparked protests as near as Boston and New York, as far away as Buenos Aires and beyond.

Climate Change and Urban Growth

In a very interesting intersection of the international with the local, California and San Bernardino County reached settlement yesterday in a suit challenging the county’s growth plan on climate change grounds. Under the settlement, the disputed general plan will remain in effect, but “[t]he County agrees to use best efforts to prepare and adopt the General Plan amendment, the Greenhouse Gas Emissions Reduction Plan, and the environmental review of those documents… within 30 months” of the settlement’s execution. A parallel suit by environmental groups was not part of the settlement, and so may continue to put pressure on the county.
This suit and its resolution reflect the complexities of law structured around fixed levels of governance attempting to address a problem like climate change. Localities are often at the front-end of forwarding more progressive climate policy, such as in their joining international coalitions of cities, developing greenhouse gas emissions plans, and pledging to meet Kyoto standards. But this dispute serves as an important reminder that localities also are important sites in the dialogue about whether economic development and emissions reductions can be reconciled. For example, Warming Law Blog has reported on the massive political tensions surrounding this suit. As our carbon economy faces up to the crisis of climate change, these kinds of conversations will only become more critical.