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Articles 1 - 7 of 7
Full-Text Articles in Environmental Law
Regulating What Can't Be Measured: Reviewing The Current State Of Animal Agriculture's Air Emissions Regulation Post-Waterkeeper Alliance V. Epa, Kyle Weldon
Student Scholarship
While the Omnibus Bill may now provide CAFOs with a shield from reporting requirements, this article reviews the history behind production agriculture’s air emissions regulation challenges and why this issue still matters moving forward. Part I provides an overview of today’s modern animal agricultural industry, looking at how CAFOs have grown in size in recent years and the potential air pollution issues that stem from that growth. Part II analyzes the current state of federal air emissions regulations impacting CAFOs, focusing on the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA) and the Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act (EPCRA). …
The Social Cost Of Carbon, Greenhouse Gas Policies, And Politicized Benefit/Cost Analysis, Benjamin Zycher
The Social Cost Of Carbon, Greenhouse Gas Policies, And Politicized Benefit/Cost Analysis, Benjamin Zycher
Texas A&M Law Review
Benefit/cost analysis can be a powerful tool for examination of proposed (or alternative) public policies, but, unsurprisingly, decisionmakers’ policy preferences can drive the analysis, rather than the reverse. That is the reality with respect to the Obama Administration computation of the social cost of carbon, a crucial parameter underlying the quantitative analysis of its proposed climate policies, now being reversed in substantial part by the Trump Administration. The Obama analysis of the social cost of carbon suffered from four central problems: the use of global benefits in the benefit/cost calculation, the failure to apply a 7% discount rate as required …
Drought And Public Necessity: Can A Common-Law "Stick" Increase Flexibility In Western Water Law?, Robin Kundis Craig
Drought And Public Necessity: Can A Common-Law "Stick" Increase Flexibility In Western Water Law?, Robin Kundis Craig
Texas A&M Law Review
Drought is a recurring—and likely increasing—challenge to water rights administration in western states under the prior appropriation doctrine, where “first in time” senior rights are often allocated to non-survival uses such as commercial agriculture, rather than to drinking water supply for cities. While states and localities facing severe drought have used a variety of voluntary programs to reallocate water, these programs by their very nature cannot guarantee that water will in fact be redistributed to the uses that best promote public health and community survival. In addition, pure market solutions run the risk that “survival water” will become too expensive …
Carrots And Sticks In Private Climate Governance, Jonathan Gilligan
Carrots And Sticks In Private Climate Governance, Jonathan Gilligan
Texas A&M Law Review
When public governance fails to address important environmental threats— such as climate change—private governance by firms, not-for-profits, individuals, and households can produce significant reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. Private governance can take the form of either a carrot or a stick, using incentives or punishments. Shareholder activism as a form of private governance of corporations has largely been confrontational, leading most climate-related actions to fail. This Article examines the potential for private governance to take a more collaborative approach and to frame shareholder engagement with management in terms of opportunity. It also examines private governance successes at reducing household emissions …
Regulatory Carrots And Sticks In Climate Policy: Some Political Economic Observations, Jason S. Johnston
Regulatory Carrots And Sticks In Climate Policy: Some Political Economic Observations, Jason S. Johnston
Texas A&M Law Review
This Article sets out an informal political economic theory which explains the relative permanence of regulatory carrots—legislative subsidies and mandates for product use—versus the transience of regulatory sticks—traditional costly regulatory requirements. After setting out the elements of this theory, I illustrate it with the dramatic rise in the Obama Administration and abrupt cessation in the Trump Administration of attempts to use conventional U.S. environmental regulatory sticks to end the U.S. coal industry. The Article turns then to describe a concrete example of a regulatory carrot—the U.S. corn ethanol mandate—that has survived despite overwhelming evidence that its environmental benefits, if any, …
Regulatory Fracture Plugging: Managing Risks To Water From Shale Development, Caroline Cecot
Regulatory Fracture Plugging: Managing Risks To Water From Shale Development, Caroline Cecot
Texas A&M Law Review
Debates about the desirability of widespread shale development have highlighted outstanding uncertainty about its health, safety, and environmental impacts—most prominently, its water-contamination risks—and the ability of current institutions to deal with these impacts. States, the primary regulators of oil and gas extraction, face pressure from the energy industry, local communities, and, in some cases, the federal government to strike the right balance between energy production and the health and safety of individuals and the environment—an elusive balance given the ongoing risk uncertainty. This dynamic is not especially unique to fracking, or even oil and gas extraction; instead, this dynamic, characterized …
Payments For Ecosystem Services: Past, Present And Future, James Salzman, Genevieve Bennett, Nathaniel Carroll, Allie Goldstein, Michael Jenkins
Payments For Ecosystem Services: Past, Present And Future, James Salzman, Genevieve Bennett, Nathaniel Carroll, Allie Goldstein, Michael Jenkins
Texas A&M Law Review
While we don’t tend to think about it, healthy ecosystems provide a variety of critical benefits. Ecosystem goods, the physical items an ecosystem provides, are obvious. Forests provide timber; coastal marshes provide shellfish. While less visible and generally taken for granted, the services underpinning these goods are equally important. Created by the interactions of living organisms with their environment, ecosystem services provide the conditions and processes that sustain human life.1 If you doubt this, consider how to grow an apple without pollination, pest control, or soil fertility. Once one realizes the importance of ecosystem services, three points quickly emerge: (1) …