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Cultivating A Green Political Landscape: Lessons For Climate Change Policy From The Defeat Of California's Proposition 23, Eric Biber Mar 2013

Cultivating A Green Political Landscape: Lessons For Climate Change Policy From The Defeat Of California's Proposition 23, Eric Biber

Vanderbilt Law Review

In the fall of 2010, two major political battles over climate change in the United States reached their climax. At the federal level, efforts to enact comprehensive climate change legislation-already in doubt after the Senate refused to consider legislation passed by the House-were terminated for the near future by a landslide win for conservative Republicans, who are overwhelmingly hostile to climate change legislation, in midterm Congressional elections.' At the state level, California voters considered Proposition 23, a ballot initiative that would have effectively repealed the state's comprehensive global warming statute (AB 32, enacted in 2006). Yet despite the fact that …


Private Environmental Governance, Michael P. Vandenbergh Jan 2013

Private Environmental Governance, Michael P. Vandenbergh

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Environmental law has quietly transformed from a positive law field deeply rooted in administrative law to one that is also heavily rooted in private law and private governance. After two decades (1970-1990) of remarkable activity, more than two decades have now passed without a major federal environmental statute (1991-2012). Whether the appropriate next step is expansion or contraction, reforms to the federal statutory framework have stalled. Federal regulatory activity and state and local measures have filled some of the gap, but private governance efforts – the pursuit of public ends through private standards, monitoring, enforcement, and dispute resolution – now …


Climate Change Meets The Law Of The Horse, J.B. Ruhl, James Salzman Jan 2013

Climate Change Meets The Law Of The Horse, J.B. Ruhl, James Salzman

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

The climate change policy debate has only recently turned its full attention to adaptation - how to address the impacts of climate change we have already begun to experience and that will likely increase over time. Legal scholars have in turn begun to explore how the many different fields of law will and should respond. During this nascent period, one overarching question has gone unexamined: how will the legal system as a whole organize around climate change adaptation? Will a new distinct field of climate change adaptation law and policy emerge, or will legal institutions simply work away at the …


Harmonizing Distributed Energy And The Endangered Species Act, J.B. Ruhl Jan 2013

Harmonizing Distributed Energy And The Endangered Species Act, J.B. Ruhl

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

This Article explores the intersection of utility-scale wind power development and the Endangered Species Act, which thus far has not been as happy a union as one might expect. Part I provides background on how the ESA and wind power have met in policy, permitting, and litigation. Part II then examines whether wind power (and other renewable energy sources) can and should receive a green pass under the ESA given its unquestioned climate change mitigation benefits, concluding that doing so would face a host of legal and policy concerns. Part III then outlines a model for administrative innovation of ESA …