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Full-Text Articles in Law
Neutralizing The Atmosphere, Shelley Welton
Neutralizing The Atmosphere, Shelley Welton
All Faculty Scholarship
“Net zero” has rapidly become the new organizing paradigm of climate change law. In the past few years, thousands of countries, companies, states, and cities have developed pledges that promise by a set date—typically around 2050—that any carbon they emit will be counterbalanced by capturing an equal amount of carbon out of the atmosphere. Collectively, these pledges now cover more than 91% of the global economy. This widespread adoption of scientifically aligned climate policy appears on its surface like a cause for celebration. However, concerns are mounting. To date, critiques of net zero have centered on what this Feature terms …
On Environmental, Climate Change & National Security Law, Mark P. Nevitt
On Environmental, Climate Change & National Security Law, Mark P. Nevitt
All Faculty Scholarship
This Article offers a new way to think about climate change. Two new climate change assessments — the 2018 Fourth National Climate Assessment (NCA) and the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel’s Special Report on Climate Change — prominently highlight climate change’s multifaceted national security risks. Indeed, not only is climate change a “super wicked” environmental problem, it also accelerates existing national security threats, acting as both a “threat accelerant” and “catalyst for conflict.” Further, climate change increases the intensity and frequency of extreme weather events while threatening nations’ territorial integrity and sovereignty through rising sea levels. It causes both internal displacement …
Deploying Machine Learning For A Sustainable Future, Cary Coglianese
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 …
Could Official Climate Denial Revive The Common Law As A Regulatory Backstop?, Mark P. Nevitt, Robert Percival
Could Official Climate Denial Revive The Common Law As A Regulatory Backstop?, Mark P. Nevitt, Robert Percival
All Faculty Scholarship
The Trump Administration is rapidly turning the clock back on climate policy and environmental regulation. Despite overwhelming, peer-reviewed scientific evidence, administration officials eager to promote greater use of fossil fuels are disregarding climate science. This Article argues that this massive and historic deregulation may spawn yet another wave of legal innovation as litigants, including states and their political subdivisions, return to the common law to protect the health of the planet. Prior to the emergence of the major federal environmental laws in the 1970s, the common law of nuisance gave rise to the earliest environmental decisions in U.S. history. In …
Global Warming Advocacy Science: A Cross Examination, Jason S. Johnston
Global Warming Advocacy Science: A Cross Examination, Jason S. Johnston
All Faculty Scholarship
Legal scholarship has come to accept as true the various pronouncements of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and other scientists who have been active in the movement for greenhouse gas (ghg) emission reductions to combat global warming. The only criticism that legal scholars have had of the story told by this group of activist scientists – what may be called the climate establishment – is that it is too conservative in not paying enough attention to possible catastrophic harm from potentially very high temperature increases. This paper departs from such faith in the climate establishment by comparing the …
Problems Of Equity And Efficiency In The Design Of International Greenhouse Gas Cap-And-Trade Schemes, Jason S. Johnston
Problems Of Equity And Efficiency In The Design Of International Greenhouse Gas Cap-And-Trade Schemes, Jason S. Johnston
All Faculty Scholarship
This article argues that international greenhouse gas (GHG) cap-and-trade schemes suffer from inherent problems of enforceability and verifiability that both cause significant inefficiencies and create inevitable tradeoffs between equity and efficiency. A standard result in the economic analysis of international GHG cap and trade schemes is that an allocation of initial permits that favors poor, developing countries (making such countries net sellers in equilibrium) may be necessary not only to further redistributive goals but also the efficiency of the GHG cap and trade scheme. This coincidence of equity and efficiency is, however, unlikely to be realized under more realistic assumptions …