Law Commons^™

The Structure Of U.S. Climate Policy, Michael Pappas

Publications

Urgent emission reduction and community adaptation efforts are necessary to avert catastrophic climate-change harms. To assess our nation’s progress toward such efforts, this Article develops a comprehensive structural analysis of U.S. climate policy at the federal, state, and local levels. It observes that current climate policies reflect disparate federal, state, and local strategies around emissions regulation, emission reduction subsidies, adaptation, and liability approaches. The Article then analyzes the dynamics between federal, state, and local strategies in these policy areas.

This examination leads to some surprising conclusions. Under current policy alignments, further emission regulation measures do not appear to be realistic …

Corporate Climate Targets: Between Science And Climate Washing, Nadav Orian Peer

Publications

The use of corporate climate targets has exploded in recent years. Over three thousand corporations, including the largest and most profitable in the world, have adopted corporate climate targets as commitments to align their actions with climate science and the Paris Agreement. However, the broad adoption of these targets raises important questions: are these commitments truly aligned with science in the way they are advertised, or do they raise “climate washing” concerns, i.e., do they exaggerate the benefits and significance of the climate targets? This Article investigates the role that science actually plays within targets, and explores potential theories of …

(Carbon) Farming Our Way Out Of Climate Change, Alexia Brunet Marks

Publications

Numerous climate-related emergencies highlight the challenges and urgency posed by climate change: the 2018 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Report, the Global Climate Action Summit in California and international student walkouts, to name a few. While the IPCC Report sent an urgent cry to reduce total emissions and to achieve specific results—45% reduction by 2030 and net-zero emissions by 2050—reductions need to be combined with capturing and storing atmospheric carbon dioxide. Scientific studies have shown that an annual increase of 0.4% of carbon stored in soils would make it possible to stop the present increase in atmospheric CO2.

This …

Environmental Justice And The Possibilities For Environmental Law, Sarah Krakoff

Publications

Climate change and extreme inequality combine to cause disproportionate harms to poor communities throughout the world. Further, unequal resource allocation is shot through with the structures of racism and other forms of discrimination. This Essay explores these phenomena in two different places in the United States, and traces law’s role in constructing environmental and economic vulnerability. The Essay then proposes that solutions, if there are any to be had, lie in expanding our notions of what kinds of laws are relevant to achieving environmental justice, and in seeing law as a possible tactic for instigating broader social change but not …

Accidents Of Federalism: Ratemaking And Policy Innovation In Public Utility Law, William Boyd, Ann E. Carlson

Publications

Decarbonizing the electric power sector will be central to any serious effort to fight climate change. Many observers have suggested that the congressional failure to enact a uniform system of electricity regulation could stifle the transition to a low-carbon electricity grid. This Article contends that the critique is overstated. In fact, innovation is occurring across different aspects of the electricity system and across different types of states in ways one would not expect to see under a single, national approach. As the Article demonstrates, this innovation stems in part from Congress’s failure to enact a single, national approach to electricity …

Settler Colonialism And Reclamation: Where American Indian Law And Natural Resources Law Meet, Sarah Krakoff

Publications

Three hours west of Phoenix, Arizona, the Colorado River Indian Tribes (“CRIT”), a federally recognized tribe that includes over 3,700 enrolled members of Mohave, Chemehuevi, Navajo, and Hopi descent, occupies a reservation nearly 300,000 acres in size. The CRIT was one of five tribes to have its water rights confirmed in the landmark case of Arizona v. California, and therefore has senior rights to 719,248 acre-feet of Colorado River water, nearly one-third of Arizona’s allocation. How the CRIT came to be a single federally recognized tribe composed of members from four indigenous peoples located on lands that were a fraction …

Planetarian Identity Formation And The Relocalization Of Environmental Law, Sarah Krakoff

Publications

Local food, local work, local energy production--all are hallmarks of a resurgence of localism throughout contemporary environmental thought and action. The renaissance of localism might be seen as a retreat from the world's global environmental problems. This Article maintains, however, that some forms of localism are actually expressions, appropriate ones, of a planetary environmental consciousness. This Article's centerpiece is an in-depth evaluation of local climate action initiatives, including interviews with participants, as well as other data and observations about their ethics, attitudes, behaviors, and motivations. The values and identities being forged in these initiatives form the basis for timely conceptions …

The Curious Case Of Greening In Carbon Markets, William Boyd, James Salzman

Publications

Over the last several years, so-called carbon markets have emerged around the world to facilitate trading in greenhouse gas credits. This Article takes a close look at an unexpected and unprecedented development in some of these markets--premium "green" currencies have emerged and, in some cases, displaced standard compliance currencies. Past experiences with other environmental compliance markets, such as the sulfur dioxide and wetlands mitigation markets, suggest the exact opposite should be occurring. Indeed, buyers in such markets should only be interested in buying compliance, not in the underlying environmental integrity of the compliance unit. In some of the compliance carbon …

Beyond Adjudication: Resolving International Resource Disputes In An Era Of Climate Change, Anna Spain

Publications

This Article examines the role of international adjudication as a mechanism for resolving international disputes and promoting global peace and security in an era of climate change. The central claim is that adjudication has limitations that make it ineffective as a tool for resolving international resource disputes. The Article argues that adjudication is limited due to source and process challenges and it illustrates this claim by reviewing cases adjudicated by the International Court of Justice, the Permanent Court of Arbitration and other international courts and tribunals. Four categories of adjudication limitation emerge: a) cases where the parties refused to submit …

Critique Of U.S. House Bill 2454 On Climate Change, Michael J. Waggoner

Publications

The U.S. House of Representatives, in June 2009, approved a bill to create a cap and trade system and a system of regulations and subsidies to address the problems of climate change. The U.S. Senate is now considering remedies for climate change. The approach of House Bill 2454 is ill-advised, and should be rejected by the Senate, because of the problems outlined below. I propose that these problems that would not be presented by a carbon tax, a simpler and more effective remedy for the risk of climate change.

Climate Change, Fragmentation, And The Challenges Of Global Environmental Law: Elements Of A Post-Copenhagen Assemblage, William Boyd

Publications

The 2009 United Nations climate conference in Copenhagen has been widely viewed as a failure -a referendum in the eyes of many on the top-down, comprehensive approach to climate governance embodied in the Kyoto Protocol and carried forward in efforts to negotiate a successor regime. Despite a modest agreement on future work toward a new agreement, the most recent climate meeting in Cancún, Mexico reinforces this view, underscoring the conclusion that Copenhagen represents an important inflection point for international climate policy. Although much of the post-Copenhagen commentary has correctly identified various problems, even fatal flaws, with the process, very little …

Ways Of Seeing In Environmental Law: How Deforestation Became An Object Of Climate Governance, William Boyd

Publications

Few areas of law are as deeply implicated with science and technology as environmental law, yet we have only a cursory understanding of how science and technology shape the field. Environmental law, it seems, has lost sight of the constitutive role that science and technology play in fashioning the problems that it targets for regulation. Too often, the study and practice of environmental law and governance take the object of governance--be it climate change, water pollution, biodiversity, or deforestation--as self-evident, natural, and fully-formed without recognizing the significant scientific and technological investments that go into making such objects and the manner …

Energy Justice And Sustainable Development, Lakshman Guruswamy

Publications

Sustainable Development ("SD")--an expression of distributive justice--is the foundational premise of international energy and environmental law. It posits that international answers to environmental and energy problems cannot be pursued as independent and autonomous objectives but must be addressed within the framework of economic and social development. SD has been politically institutionalized in the Millennium Development Goals and a plethora of significant international instruments. Perhaps more importantly from a legal standpoint, SD is unequivocally codified, in the most widely accepted international energy and environmental treaties. This Article affirms the importance and continuing applicability of SD to the "other" third of the …

Climate Change And Institutional Competence, Mark Squillace

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No abstract provided.

American Indians, Climate Change, And Ethics For A Warming World, Sarah Krakoff

Publications

Developing a sense of ourselves that would properly balance history and nature and space and time is a more difficult task than we would suspect and involves a radical reevaluation of the way we look at the world around us. Do we continue to exploit the earth or do we preserve it and preserve life? Whether we are prepared to embark on a painful intellectual journey to discover the parameters of reconciling history and nature is the question of this generation.

Arnold Schwarzenegger And Our Common Future, Sarah Krakoff

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No abstract provided.

Water Wrongs: Why Can’T We Get It Right The First Time?, David Getches

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No abstract provided.

The Metamorphosis Of Western Water Policy: Have Federal Laws And Local Decisions Eclipsed The States’ Role?, David H. Getches

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No abstract provided.

Climate Change: The Next Dimension, Lakshman Guruswamy

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No abstract provided.

Integrated Environmental Control: The Expanding Matrix, Lakshman Guruswamy

Publications

Professor Guruswamy addresses the configuration of forces creating global warming, and canvasses the action necessary to deal with this challenge. He identifies key reasons accounting for the failure of the United States to take adequate measures to control emissions of carbon dioxide at the national level, and for resisting international attempts to do so. Guruswamy argues that the problem of global warming should be dealt with within the framework of Integrated Environmental Control (IEC)--a radical approach to pollution prevention and modification of product demand. He reasons that by encompassing energy policy within the matrix of pollution control, IEC will promote …

A True Comprehensive Approach, Lakshman Guruswamy

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No abstract provided.

Global Warming: A Comprehensive Approach, Lakshman Guruswamy

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No abstract provided.

Energy And The Environment: Confronting Common Threats To Security, Lakshman Guruswamy

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No abstract provided.

Global Warming: Integrating United States And International Law, Lakshman D. Guruswamy

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No abstract provided.