Law Commons^™

The Export Clause And The Constitutionality Of A Cap And Trade Mitigation Policy For Carbon Dioxide, Ross Astoria

Ross Astoria

The Export Clause of the Constitution prohibits the taxing of “Articles exported from any State.” In this paper I examine the effect that Export Clause jurisprudence might have on the choice of national carbon dioxide mitigation policies. I conclude that it is unlikely that a “downstream” price on carbon dioxide emissions could include exported hydrocarbons. One corollary is that, since cap and trade policies are “downstream” pricing mechanism, it would be difficult, perhaps impossible, to craft cap and trade so as to cover exported hydrocarbons. In contrast, an “upstream” carbon tax does not suffer from this constitutional infirmity. I therefore …

Emissions Trading: A Policy Option For Fighting Climate Change In Africa, Gbenga Akinwande

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis shows how an emissions trading scheme can help African countries contribute to the goal of stabilizing the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. This is done through an assessment of the gaps in Africa’s climate change mitigation policy architecture and the potential benefits of emissions trading as a policy instrument—including lessons learned from emissions trading schemes implemented in the US, the EU, New Zealand, and Chile. The thesis concludes that adopting an emissions trading scheme as a policy instrument in Africa could potentially close the gaps in its policy architecture.

Thinking Ahead: The Impacts Of Sea Level Rise On Coastal Landscape Protections, Chad J. Mcguire, Devon Lynch

Chad J McGuire

Corporate Responsibility And Climate Justice: A Proposal For A Polluter-Financed Relocation Fund For Federally Recognized Tribes Imperiled By Climate Change, Randall S. Abate

Journal Publications

Climate change threatens to displace as many as 200 million people internally and across national borders by the middle of the twenty-first century. Indigenous peoples are among the most vulnerable to these changes. With the loss of their village rapidly approaching, the residents of the Native Village of Kivalina are captives in their homeland bracing for disaster because they do not have the millions of dollars needed to relocate and there is no government fund or process in place to provide them with adequate assistance.

Part I of this article describes the factual context of the Kivalina litigation and how …

The Dynamics And Global Implications Of Subglobal Carbon-Restricting Regimes, Juscelino F. Colares

Faculty Publications

The European Union and Australia have enacted comprehensive carbon-restricting reforms that will affect both domestic and foreign industries. After describing these reforms in detail, the article develops a microeconomic analytical model that explains the impact these regimes have on the dynamics of inter-firm competition in carbon-restricting nations and how they will also influence technology choices by certain industries in carbon-friendly nations. Specifically, exporters and producers operating in vertically-integrated industries in carbon-friendly nations will increasingly elect carbon-efficient technologies to minimize costs as they adjust to a changing international regulatory environment. The article hypothesizes that this shift in the carbon intensity of …