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Full-Text Articles in Law
Natural Gas And Net Zero: Mutually Exclusive Pathways For The Southeast, Adam D. Orford
Natural Gas And Net Zero: Mutually Exclusive Pathways For The Southeast, Adam D. Orford
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Climate policy increasingly focuses on pathways to achieving net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, providing a clear standard against which to evaluate energy system planning. Examining the current and projected fuel mix of the electric power sector in the southeastern United States shows that an ongoing transition to natural gas for electricity risks locking in decades of greenhouse gas emissions at levels fundamentally incompatible with net zero goals. Furthermore, southeastern regulatory proceedings are not well designed to engage with this reality, although useful regulatory models are emerging. Natural gas will remain an important part of the southeastern fuel mix …
New York’S Professor John R. Nolon: A National Leader In Land Use Law With A Large Impact Across The Hudson Valley And The State Of New York, Patricia E. Salkin, Samuel Stewart
New York’S Professor John R. Nolon: A National Leader In Land Use Law With A Large Impact Across The Hudson Valley And The State Of New York, Patricia E. Salkin, Samuel Stewart
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As Professor John R. Nolon steps down from active law teaching, this article reflects not only on his contributions as a national thought leader in the field, but also on how he has a hand in changing the land use and conservation patterns in New York while promoting affordable housing and combating discrimination.
The Pledging World Order, Melissa J. Durkee
The Pledging World Order, Melissa J. Durkee
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There is an emerging world order characterized by unilateral pledges within a legal or “legal-ish” architecture of commitments. The pledging world order has materialized in the international legal response to climate change and in other diverse sites. It crosses and blurs the public-private divide. It erodes distinctions between multilateralism and localism, law and not-law, and progress and stasis. It is both a symptom of and a contributor to the dismantling of the Westphalian and postwar orders. Its report card is mixed: While pledging can be highly ineffective as a legal technology, the pledging world order may respond to some legitimacy …
Global Climate Governance In 3d: Mainstreaming Geoengineering Within A Unified Framework, Gabriel Weil
Global Climate Governance In 3d: Mainstreaming Geoengineering Within A Unified Framework, Gabriel Weil
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The failure of conventional climate change mitigation to reduce climate-related risks to tolerable levels has spurred interest in more unconventional—and riskier—climate interventions. What currently sounds like science fiction could become a reality in the not-so-distant future: planes blasting particles into the sky to block the sun, vast deserts covered with mirrors, algae sucking carbon into the depths of the ocean. Scholars tend to lump all these unconventional climate measures together in a fuzzy category called “geoengineering,” and set them apart from conventional climate change mitigation. But the characteristics of climate interferences vary across three distinct dimensions, which the mitigation-geoengineering dichotomy …
Incentive Compatible Climate Change Mitigation: Moving Beyond The Pledge And Review Model, Gabriel Weil
Incentive Compatible Climate Change Mitigation: Moving Beyond The Pledge And Review Model, Gabriel Weil
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Climate change represents a global commons problem, where individuals, businesses, and nation-states all lack sufficient incentives to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions to levels consistent with meeting their collectively agreed upon mitigation goals. The current "pledge and review" paradigm for global climate change mitigation, which many see as a major breakthrough, relies primarily on moral pressure, reputational incentives, and global public opinion to foster cooperation on mitigation efforts over and above those driven by maximization of narrow conceptions of national interests. Given the scale of the emissions reductions required to meet stated mitigation goals, the substantial economic costs of deep …
Taming The Super-Wicked Problem Of Waterfront Hazard Mitigation Planning: The Role Of Municipal Communication Strategies, Sarah Adams-Schoen
Taming The Super-Wicked Problem Of Waterfront Hazard Mitigation Planning: The Role Of Municipal Communication Strategies, Sarah Adams-Schoen
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In the Adaptation Report of the Fifth Assessment Report (AR5), the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) identifies floods in urban riverine and coastal areas as among the key climate-related risks for North America. Not surprisingly for residents of coastal and riverine communities devastated by recent extreme weather events, the Adaptation Report acknowledges that risks related to sea-level rise, increased frequency and duration of extreme precipitation events, and increasingly intense coastal storms are not only future risks, but are current risks that are already manifesting in property and infrastructure damage, ecosystem and social system disruption, public health impacts, and water …
Sink Or Swim: In Search Of A Model For Coastal City Climate Resilience, Sarah Adams-Schoen
Sink Or Swim: In Search Of A Model For Coastal City Climate Resilience, Sarah Adams-Schoen
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New York City, like other major cities around the world, has acknowledged the problem of climate change, undertaken a comprehensive risk assessment, created a suite of adaptation and mitigation planning initiatives, and begun to implement policies to decrease the city’s contribution to the problem and to make the city less vulnerable to the effects of climate change. This detailed analysis of the city’s climate change resilience initiatives concludes that, although many of the city’s initiatives provide a model for other coastal communities, the initiatives likely still fall short of what is required to sufficiently moderate harm from dangerous interference with …
Land Use Law Update: New York's New Climate Change Resiliency Law, Sarah Adams-Schoen
Land Use Law Update: New York's New Climate Change Resiliency Law, Sarah Adams-Schoen
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New York State’s lawmakers passed 2,603 bills over the course of the 2013-14 session, 658 of which passed both houses. Although counties and local governments are likely focusing their attention on budget-related items such as the property tax freeze/rebate program, local governments — and zoning and planning officials and practitioners in particular — should also take note of the newly enacted Community Risk and Resiliency Act (CRRA).
Climate Change Adaptation And Mitigation: A Local Solution To A Global Problem, Sarah J. Adams-Schoen
Climate Change Adaptation And Mitigation: A Local Solution To A Global Problem, Sarah J. Adams-Schoen
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Local land use laws offer powerful tools for climate change adaptation and mitigation. However, notwithstanding New York municipalities’ many impressive efforts, local laws are not yet being utilized sufficiently to create disaster-resilient or disaster-adaptive communities. New York City has done substantially more than many other cities, including, critically, setting specific CO2 emissions reduction targets and amending zoning and building codes. But, in light of the evidence of climate change and its impacts, local decision makers, resource managers, and planners throughout the state must ask whether we are doing enough. Failure to do so will continue to be costly in terms …
From Contract To Legislation: The Logic Of Modern International Lawmaking, Timothy L. Meyer
From Contract To Legislation: The Logic Of Modern International Lawmaking, Timothy L. Meyer
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The future of international lawmaking is in peril. Both trade and climate negotiations have failed to produce a multilateral agreement since the mid-1990s, while the U.N. Security Council has been unable to comprehensively respond to the humanitarian crisis in Syria. In response to multilateralism’s retreat, many prominent commentators have called for international institutions to be given the power to bind holdout states — often rising or reluctant powers such as China and the United States — without their consent. In short, these proposals envision international law traveling the road taken by federal systems such as the United States and the …
From “Food Miles” To “Moneyball”: How We Should Be Thinking About Food And Climate, Bret C. Birdsong
From “Food Miles” To “Moneyball”: How We Should Be Thinking About Food And Climate, Bret C. Birdsong
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Since Michael Pollan popularized the push to eat local food in his bestseller, The Omnivore’s Dilemma, the concept of “food miles” has been something of a rallying cry and an organizing principle in the marketing of the local food movement. Among locavores and their sympathizers, the term seems to encapsulate all that is wrong with the food system. Fresh grapes from Chile make their way to supermarkets from Maine to Minnesota, and even California. Major food conglomerates process commodity ingredients like corn, soy, and wheat into packaged food that travels across the country and across oceans before landing on …
Global Public Goods, Governance Risk, And International Energy, Timothy L. Meyer
Global Public Goods, Governance Risk, And International Energy, Timothy L. Meyer
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Scholars and commentators have long argued that issue linkages provide a way to increase cooperation on global public goods by increasing participation in global institutions, building consensus, and deterring free-riding. In this symposium article, I argue that the emphasis on the potential of issue linkages to facilitate cooperation in these ways has caused commentators to underestimate how common features of international legal institutions designed to accomplish these aims can actually undermine those institutions’ ability to facilitate cooperation. I focus on two features of institutional design that are intended to encourage participation in public goods institutions but can create the risk …
Cooperative Federalism And Wind: A New Framework For Achieving Sustainability, Patricia E. Salkin, Ashira Ostrow
Cooperative Federalism And Wind: A New Framework For Achieving Sustainability, Patricia E. Salkin, Ashira Ostrow
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This Article proposes a federal wind siting policy modeled on the cooperative federalism framework of the TCA’s Siting Policy. Part I describes some advantages of wind energy, focusing specifically on the environmental, economic, and social benefits. This Part also discusses several technical obstacles to wind energy development, including the need to supplement wind energy with conventional energy sources and the lack of adequate transmission infrastructure. Part II assesses the current regulatory regime for the siting of wind turbines, reviewing general practices across the United States at both the state and local levels. Although a number of states have been active …
New York Climate Change Report Card: Improvement Needed For More Effective Leadership And Overall Coordination With Local Government, Patricia E. Salkin
New York Climate Change Report Card: Improvement Needed For More Effective Leadership And Overall Coordination With Local Government, Patricia E. Salkin
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New York ranks eight out of the 50 states in terms of carbon emissions. While the State government is just beginning to enact meaningful programs and incentives to encourage municipal policies and actions that will reduce the impact of local decisions on our carbon footprint, a number of local governments across the State have already been at work developing and adopting "greening" strategies, policies and regulations. While the New York State Bar Association has released for comment a report of its Task Force on Global Warming which documents an impressive two-dozen current state-level laws and programs on climate change, the …
Can You Hear Me Up There? Giving Voice To Local Communities Imperative For Achieving Sustainability, Patricia E. Salkin
Can You Hear Me Up There? Giving Voice To Local Communities Imperative For Achieving Sustainability, Patricia E. Salkin
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Sustainable development is an international challenge that demands attention at all levels of government. The calls to action to achieve sustainability have varied over the last few decades. For example, in the 1970s and 1980s attention was focused on the need for environmental review and growth management strategies. In the 1990s the rhetoric shifted to smart growth and livable communities, and today, the issue has been reframed as advocates view sustainability through the lens of global warming and climate change. Regardless of the nomenclature, however, the end game is the same. While the United States as a whole speaks through …
Linking Land Use With Climate Change And Sustainability Topped State Legislative Land Use Reform Agenda In 2008, Patricia E. Salkin
Linking Land Use With Climate Change And Sustainability Topped State Legislative Land Use Reform Agenda In 2008, Patricia E. Salkin
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Linking land use with climate change and sustainability topped state legislative land use reform agenda in 2008. The only discernible state land use reform trends in 2008 have focused primarily on themes surrounding sustainability. Many states pursued statutory reforms to address the strong linkages between land use and climate change, green development and affordable housing. Only one state, Michigan, focused on recodification of its planning and zoning enabling acts.
Sustainability And Land Use Planning: Greening State And Local Land Use Plans And Regulations To Address Climate Change Challenges And Preserve Resources For Future Generations, Patricia E. Salkin
Sustainability And Land Use Planning: Greening State And Local Land Use Plans And Regulations To Address Climate Change Challenges And Preserve Resources For Future Generations, Patricia E. Salkin
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Although a coordinated national policy on climate change should be developed, initiatives at the local government level through the land use planning and regulatory control processes have tremendous potential to dramatically contribute to the reduction of green house gas emissions, leading to a reduction in the carbon footprint and ultimately to a more sustainable environment. Part I of this article discusses opportunities for using the comprehensive land use planning process to address sustainability and provides examples of how this is being accomplished across the country. Part II mentions the growing number of state and local climate action plans (and cross-references …