Law Commons^™

Tragedy Of The Energy Commons: How Government Regulation Can Help Mitigate The Environmental And Public Health Consequences Of Cryptocurrency Mining, Jeff Thomson

Seattle Journal of Technology, Environmental & Innovation Law

The use of cryptocurrencies in daily life has continued to rise over the last decade and shows no signs of slowing down. Although cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin, provide numerous tangible benefits to society, the process of mining these cryptocurrencies is extremely energy intensive. Accordingly, a tragedy of the energy commons has resulted whereby the monetary incentive to mine cryptocurrencies has distorted our collective ability to care for our shared energy resources. The current system allows for industrious individuals to set up cryptocurrency mines in regions that have access to plentiful and cheap energy sources, utilize this energy to power their …

Compulsory Licensing Of Climate Engineering Patents: How Embracing Technology- And Research-Sharing Strategies Brings Us One Step Closer To Solving Climate Change, Buzz Hardin

Arkansas Law Review

The impact of climate change spans the globe and includes increasingly severe and dangerous climate events, including coastal flooding, extreme heat and wildfires, reduced crop yield, and decreased food security. In the United States, if the proper steps toward mitigating or reversing the effects of climate change are not taken, it is very likely that the United States will experience substantial damage to its economy, the health of its citizens, and the environment. In response to the challenges presented by climate change, the number of inventions in the field of climate engineering, or “geoengineering,” has skyrocketed over the past several …

Enforcing Higher Standards For Flood Hazard Mitigation In Vermont, Tamsin Flanders

Masters Theses

The state of Vermont faces increasing risk of costly damage from catastrophic flooding events as climate change increases the frequency of heavy rains and cumulative precipitation. In addition to increasing flood inundation risk, extreme precipitation events are leading to high rates damage from fluvial erosion—erosion caused by the force of floodwater and the materials it carries. As in all U.S. states, flood hazard governance in Vermont is shared by multiple levels of government and involves a complex compliance model that relies on local governments to regulate private property owners to achieve community, state, or federal goals.

To encourage municipalities to …

Longstanding Regulatory Loophole Leaves Minority Pesticide Applicators Unprotected, Sandra Daussin, De'von Carter, Michael Moore

NCCU Environmental Law Review

No abstract provided.

What A Difference A State Makes: California’S Authority To Regulate Motor Vehicle Emissions Under The Clean Air Act And The Future Of State Autonomy, Chiara Pappalardo

Michigan Journal of Environmental & Administrative Law

Air pollutants from motor vehicles constitute one of the leading sources of local and global air degradation with serious consequences for human health and the overall stability of Earth’s climate. Under the Clean Air Act (“CAA”), for over fifty years, the state of California has served as a national “laboratory” for the testing of technological solutions and regulatory approaches to improve air quality. On September 19, 2019, the Trump Administration revoked California’s authority to set more stringent pollution emission standards. The revocation of California’s authority frustrates ambitious initiatives undertaken in California and in other states to reduce local air pollution …

Look To Windward: The Michigan Environmental Protection Act And The Case For Atmospheric Trust Litigation In The Mitten State, Jonathan M. Coumes

Michigan Journal of Environmental & Administrative Law

Failure to address climate change or even slow the growth of carbon emissions has led to innovation in the methods activists are using to push decisionmakers away from disaster. In the United States, climate activists frustrated by decades of legislative and executive inaction have turned to the courts to force the hand of the state. In their most recent iteration, climate cases have focused on the public trust doctrine, the notion that governments hold their jurisdictions’ natural resources in trust for the public. Plaintiffs have argued that the atmosphere is part of the public trust and that governments have a …

The Rise And Fall Of Clean Air Act Climate Policy, Nathan Richardson

Michigan Journal of Environmental & Administrative Law

The Clean Air Act has proven to be one of the most successful and durable statutes in American law. After the Supreme Court’s 2008 decision in Massachusetts v. EPA, there was great hope that the Act could be brought to bear on climate change, the most pressing current environmental challenge of our time. Massachusetts was fêted as the most important environmental case ever decided, and, upon it, the Environmental Protection Agency under President Obama built a sweeping program of greenhouse gas regulations, aimed first at emissions from road vehicles, and later at fossil fuel power plants. It was the most …

Implementing Nepa In The Age Of Climate Change, Jayni Foley Hein, Natalie Jacewicz

Michigan Journal of Environmental & Administrative Law

The national government has a crucial role to play in combating climate change, yet federal projects continue to constitute a major source of United States greenhouse gas emissions. Under the National Environmental Policy Act, agencies must consider the environmental impacts of major federal actions before they can move forward. But agencies frequently downplay or ignore the climate change impacts of their projects in NEPA analyses, citing a slew of technical difficulties and uncertainties. This Article analyzes a suite of the most common analytical failures on the part of agencies with respect to climate change: failure to account for a project’s …

Regulating Micromobility: Examining Transportation Equity And Access, Karen Johnston, Deirdre A. Oakley, Audra Durham, Claire Bass, Stacie Kershner

Journal of Comparative Urban Law and Policy

This paper evaluates the various ways cities have or are attempting to address e-scooter usage equity concerns, with a focus on Atlanta, Georgia as compared to Austin, Texas; Charlotte, North Carolina; Los Angeles, California; and Portland, Oregon. The cities were evaluated by the laws in effect at the time of coding, which occurred during the project period of October through December 2019. To explore how existing laws and regulations affect access to e-scooters, this research was guided by the following overarching questions: How equitable is access to e-scooters? How can equitable access to e-scooters be improved? How can a data-driven …

How Regulator Can Reduce Fish Mortality From Recreational Fishing, Jonathan (Jack) Agosta

Fordham Environmental Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Incidental Environmental Agency, Tara K. Righetti

Utah Law Review

State oil and gas conservation agencies are the gatekeepers to oil and gas development: as the agencies charged with granting drilling permits, they decide if, when, where, and how oil and gas will be developed. As such, oil and gas conservation agencies sit on the front lines in the emerging, and increasingly irresolvable, struggle between fossil energy development and the environment. Current oil and gas conservation regulation is designed to promote development, maximize recovery of the resource, and protect the individual property rights of mineral owners. However, advocacy by environmental constituencies, including surface owners and local governments, has challenged the …

Deploying Machine Learning For A Sustainable Future, Cary Coglianese

All Faculty Scholarship

To meet the environmental challenges of a warming planet and an increasingly complex, high tech economy, government must become smarter about how it makes policies and deploys its limited resources. It specifically needs to build a robust capacity to analyze large volumes of environmental and economic data by using machine-learning algorithms to improve regulatory oversight, monitoring, and decision-making. Three challenges can be expected to drive the need for algorithmic environmental governance: more problems, less funding, and growing public demands. This paper explains why algorithmic governance will prove pivotal in meeting these challenges, but it also presents four likely obstacles that …

The Lasting Impacts Of Mass Consumerism And The Disposable Culture: A Proposition For The Development Of Plastic Shopping Bag Bans In Texas Law, David Brewster

St. Mary's Law Journal

This Article addresses the developing state of plastic bag bans in Texas municipal and state jurisprudence. The Article recites the history of plastic bag bans and their impacts on the environment, the issues pertinent to municipal powers as regulatory devices, and analyzes the most recent case regarding bag bans in Texas, which is the Texas Supreme Court’s opinion in City of Laredo v. Laredo Merchants Association. The Article makes suggestions about how to move forward in developing municipal plastic bag bans for the benefit of the environment, and addresses the immediate impacts of bag ban litigation and legislation in …

Going Hemp Wild: Understanding The Challenges And Opportunities For Fda Regulation Of Cbd In Food Products, Hannah Catt

Journal of Food Law & Policy

After the passage of the 2018 Farm Bill, champions of hemp began to tout opportunities for farmers and businesses involved with the crop. The industry has rallied around one of hemp’s major byproducts, cannabidiol, or CBD. However, the demand for CBD has left the Food and Drug Administration (“FDA”) playing catch-up. This article explains what CBD is, how it is derived, current FDA-approved uses, and a current path forward for the FDA in creating guidance for industry and consumers.

Electric Load Flexibility Analysis For The Clean Energy Transition, Peter Alstone, Mary Ann Piette

Notre Dame Journal on Emerging Technologies

A clean energy transition on the electricity grid is underway with the addition of new renewable generation, improved capabilities for sensing and controls, and "distributed energy resources" (DER) that include efficiency, battery storage, flexible loads, and electrified heating and transportation. The complex interactions between these advances require new analytic techniques to support decisions by utilities, regulators, and enterprises developing and deploying new DER. In this paper, we describe an approach for estimating the potential of flexible loads (often also referred to as "demand response" (DR)) to contribute to the planning and operation of the grid. The analysis was developed in …