The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recently announced it will unveil carbon emissions standards for all newly built power plants in the United States.  The New York Times reported the new standards will allow natural gas power plants to emit up to 1,000 pounds of carbon dioxide per megawatt hour, and new coal powered plants may admit up to 1,400 pounds of carbon dioxide per megawatt hour.  As the article notes, natural gas power generators will easily meet the new standard.  However, many coal producers fear the 1,400 pound standard will all but kill the construction of future coal power plants, as the technology necessary to “scrub” the emissions to this lower level require new technologies and equipment which renders coal powered plants economically unviable.

While this EPA standard continues the fight between the Obama administration and environmentalists on one side, and conservatives (generally, although in many coal producing states the democratic representatives also disfavor the new EPA regulations for local economic reasons) and the power industry on the other, what is lost in this fight is any real attempt to find common ground on other power sources that work, without massive cost to the environment or the economy: nuclear power.  Quite simply, the Obama administration and the conservatives could both score economic and political points if they adopt an albeit radical idea domestically: trading nuclear bombs for nuclear energy.

I am only kidding when I tell my Property students that using the word “usufruct” on their finals will yield extra credit, but I am in fact intrigued by the venerable notion of usufructuary rights. The holders of usufructuary rights may use and enjoy real property that is vested in another as long as they do not use up that property or do harm to it.

The potential assertion of usufructuary rights has surfaced recently in conjunction with Governor Walker’s efforts to prompt iron ore mining along the northern rim of Wisconsin and to create sales opportunities for manufacturers of mining equipment. Native Americans and particularly several bands of Chippewa (formally recognized branches of the Ojibwe people) have opposed the development of the mines because mining waste contains sulfides that pollute wetlands, streams, and groundwater. And, as it turns out, the Chippewa have usufructuary rights related to the lands where the projected mines will be located!