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Forest Fires As A Common International Concern: Precedents For The Progressive Development Of International Environmental Law, Nicholas A. Robinson
Forest Fires As A Common International Concern: Precedents For The Progressive Development Of International Environmental Law, Nicholas A. Robinson
Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications
Without a better global effort to prevent and cope with forest fires, the remaining wild forests' resources of the world are at risk. Quite apart from the present loss of commercial timber and species habitat, and the present problems of flooding and erosion in the aftermath of fires, the loss of these wooded lands will reduce the capacity of regions to absorb carbon dioxide through photosynthesis, thereby making the challenge of managing emissions of greenhouse gases all the more problematic. Forests sequester carbon in their woody tissue as a result of photosynthesis, and are often termed the “lungs” of the …
David Ross Brower And Nature's Laws, Nicholas A. Robinson
David Ross Brower And Nature's Laws, Nicholas A. Robinson
Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications
“We're not blindly opposed to progress. We're opposed to blind progress.” These words summed up the style and power of David R. Brower. Indelibly, he chiseled toe hold after toe hold on an arduous climb across the rock face of the commercial forces driven to seek short-term gain from natural resources and oblivious to the longer-term costs to the Earth that the ecological sciences would chronicle but that economists would disregard as mere “externalities” in their classical market models. As Brower campaigned to protect the wilderness of North America and the Earth, through his sheer conviction and abundant eloquence, he …
Direct Environmental Standing For Chartered Conservation Corporations, Karl S. Coplan
Direct Environmental Standing For Chartered Conservation Corporations, Karl S. Coplan
Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications
This article suggests that, as an antidote to the ever-tightening restrictions on individual environmental standing, a state may charter a not-for-profit corporation organized to protect a particular environmental resource, giving the corporation a non-exclusive portion of the State's interest in enforcing applicable environmental protections. The dichotomy between not-for-profit organizations that may litigate only as the representative of individual members' interests, and business corporations that assert their own direct economic interests, may seem natural to our late-twentieth-century sensibility, but is not founded in original intent. The framers of Article III, which grants jurisdiction over “cases and controversies” to the federal courts, …
Legal Systems, Decisionmaking, And The Science Of Earth's Systems: Procedural Missing Links, Nicholas A. Robinson
Legal Systems, Decisionmaking, And The Science Of Earth's Systems: Procedural Missing Links, Nicholas A. Robinson
Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications
Decisionmakers disregard scientific findings regarding environmental conditions, despite recommendations of the 1992 "Earth Summit" in Agenda 21 that science should provide a foundation for sustainable development. Although environmental degradation trends continue to exacerbate, decisionmakers address only selected issues. This Article examines an analytic paradigm for evaluating when decisionmakers are ready to address a problem and describes the catalytic role that scientific information can serve in prompting remedial action. Unless systematic procedures require evaluation of environmental scientific findings in the normal course of decisionmaking, science will continue to be ignored. One hallmark of Environmental Law has been to fashion such procedures, …