Paul Sabin

Review of applications will begin on April 1. Job Posting Link: apply.interfolio.com/182367

Job Opportunity: "Lecturer, Environmental Policy, Politics, and Law." This is a multi-year appointment. Come join our team!

Corner Crossing - The American Surveyor In October of 2021 four hunters travelled down Rattlesnake Pass Road in Carbon County, Wyoming…

The ability to corner cross is an interesting product of mapping technology that allows hunters to find the corner where two pieces of public land intersect. Apparently there are more than 27,000 landlocked corners in the West amerisurv.com/2023/02/09/c...

‘Corner-crossing’ to reach public lands is legal, appeals court rules The decision, in a case that pitted four Missouri hunters against a millionaire Wyoming landowner, protects public access to millions of acres across the West.

A victory for public access to land-- and a conflict between stock raisers and private landowners vs hunters and anglers www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2025/...

Don’t Buy a Tesla. Sell Your Tesla. Refuse a Tesla at the Rental Counter. Yes—It Will Help. Elon Musk’s car company is in a precarious spot.

The best way to fight back against Musk: Don’t buy a Tesla. (And if you own one, sell it.)

The company was already in a precarious position before Musk launched his assault on democracy. A Tesla boycott would be devastating – and richly deserved.

Me, in Slate 🧵

An amusing puzzle-- Robert Goodman, "After the Planners"?

Gutting USAID threatens billions of dollars for U.S. farms, businesses U.S. businesses that sold goods and services to USAID are in limbo, including American farms dealing in rice, wheat and soybeans.

www.washingtonpost.com/politics/202...

New Data Shows Major Electrical Disruption Ahead of Eaton Fire A private lab found evidence of two massive electrical faults in the Eaton Canyon area just before a fire erupted there and spread through much of Altadena, Calif.

What to make of the grid/wildfire nexus as we lean into electrification? www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

Power lines are suspended from metal towers across a scorched canyon, with houses on hillsides in the background. A headline reads: "New Video of Eaton Fire Raises More Questions for Power Company." Photo by Stephen Ross Goldstein for The New York Times.

Investigators are still trying to determine what started the Eaton fire, which raged through Altadena, California, and killed 17 people. A new video appears to show sparking on a power line near the origin of the blaze. www.nytimes.com/2025/01/26/u...

New Zero episode! 🎧 travelling back in time with @paulsabin.bsky.social and Reagan-era environmental lawyer Jonathan Lash to better understand what may come in the Trump years ahead www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

Imagine what we might have done w nine more IQ points
www.washingtonpost.com/world/2025/0...

Like Reagan's anti-regulatory efforts, which accomplished relatively little bc they failed to also recognize the legitimacy of government action, Trump's attacks on regulation promise another lurch in an unproductive and likely unsuccessful direction.

Environmental protection and bureaucratic reform were both personal passions for Carter. But Carter found it difficult to persuade either liberals or conservatives of the merits of embracing both priorities, along with the struggle to balance them.

Perspective | Government regulation is vital, but it also needs to be efficient Jimmy Carter's vision for protecting the environment and consumers — while cutting wasteful regulations.

RIP Jimmy Carter at 100. Here's a look back at Carter's efforts to balance govt regulation and govt reform. Carter believed that making government more efficient and effective would build public support for active, liberal governance. www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2021...

Traffic Noise Is a Silent Killer The ruckus of cars and planes can damage not just your ears, but also your heart.

It's unfortunate that Gonzalez's @theatlantic.com editors did not think that article should engage the piece The Atlantic had run just the previous year. It would have been more interesting and complex to wrestle with the tension. www.theatlantic.com/health/archi...

Why Do Rich People Love Quiet? The sound of gentrification is silence.

There's a counter argument about culture and noise that makes some good points, but also completely disregards the health research. Xochitl Gonzalez's widely circulated article, for ex, simply dismissed noise reg'n as something that the rich impose on the poor. www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc...

Environmental Noise Pollution in the United States: Developing an Effective Public Health Response Background: Tens of millions of Americans suffer from a range of adverse health outcomes due to noise exposure, including heart disease and hearing loss. Reducing environmental noise pollution is achi...

The noise/health research has gotten more definitive, but the policy response has lagged. pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC...

A friend of William Howard Taft IV, who was working for Nader in 1969 on Nader's FTC report, wrote to Taft to mock Nader's attack on rock music. "Has he freaked out, or is it all due perhaps to excessive amts. of base metals in his dental work?"

Nader was/is probably right about noise hazards, but noise has never gotten its due as an environmental health threat, despite growing evidence of its impact.

Reminds me of one of Ralph Nader's little known and less popular crusades-- a call for federal regulation of noise levels in rock music performances. Nader considered excessive noise a worker safety issue and a consumer safety problem.

Why restaurants are so loud, and what science says we can do about it Complaints about noise continue to dominate restaurant reviews. Here’s what experts say about how sound affects our bodies and what we can do to mitigate it.

Read this @washingtonpost article back in June and thought it was an excellent use of audio and graphics in storytelling: www.washingtonpost.com/science/inte...

DOGE could help fix our infrastructure problems — or make them far worse They’re dead wrong that taking a meat axe to the federal government’s workforce will make things better; in fact, that’s more likely to make things worse.

The newly-announced DOGE could help institute these reforms. Unfortunately, Vivek and Elon’s expressed interest in cutting personnel would only exacerbate out state capacity problems – a point I expand on in my op-ed in @TheHill today:

thehill.com/opinion/fina...

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🚨New paper: State Capacity for Building Infrastructure

US infrastructure construction (transportation, energy, etc.) is often costly & slow.

I discuss the data & propose reforms. 🧵

Here is the paper: papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

The Liberal Attack on Government The left criticized administrative power, and then lost control of both the government and the narrative that surrounded it.

You can get a taste of the book here www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

Lots of post-election discussion now about "the groups" and the "nonprofit industrial complex" in Democratic Party politics. Check out "Public Citizens" to read about how some of these groups got started and why their founders embraced a "public interest movement" as the right solution.

Public Citizens The story of the dramatic postwar struggle over the proper role of citizens and government in American society., Public Citizens, The Attack on Big Government and the Remaking of American Liberalism, ...

"Public Citizens: The Attack on Big Government and the Remaking of American Liberalism" will come out in paperback on December 3. wwnorton.com/books/978039...

This week's event poster attached. If you're local to New Haven, you might like to join the Yale Environmental Humanities email newsletter which lists upcoming in-person and Zoom events in one Monday newsletter, many open to the public: subscribe.yale.edu/login?return...

We are hosting a few online lectures and panels (tba) including one this Thursday

At present we're planning in-person only, but will announce if we decide to go hybrid. Thanks for your interest!

"New Perspectives in Energy History" Conference-- Free registration is now open. Saturday, March 2, 2024 in New Haven, CT environmentalhistory.yale.edu/programs/con...