Environmental Law Commons^™

Climate Engineering Field Research: The Favorable Setting Of International Environmental Law, Jesse Reynolds

Jesse Reynolds

Abstract: As forecasts for climate change and its impacts have become direr, climate engineering proposals have come under increasing consideration and are presently moving toward field trials. This article examines the relevant international environmental law, distinguishing between climate engineering research and deployment. It also emphasizes the climate change context of these proposals and the enabling function of law. Extant international environmental law generally favors such field tests, in large part because, even though field trials may present uncertain risks to humans and the environment, climate engineering may reduce the greater risks of climate change. Notably, this favorable legal setting is ...

The International Regulation Of Climate Engineering: Lessons From Nuclear Power, Jesse Reynolds

Jesse Reynolds

Proposals for climate engineering—intentional large-scale interventions in climate systems—are increasingly under consideration as potential additional responses to climate change, yet they pose risks of their own. Existing international regulation of large-scale field testing and deployment is considered inadequate. This article looks to the closest existing analogy—nuclear power—for lessons, and concludes that climate engineering research will most likely be promoted and will not be the subject of a binding multilateral agreement in the near future. Instead, climate engineering and its research will probably be internationally regulated gradually, with an initially low degree of legalisation, and through a ...

Environmental Law Outside The Canon, Todd S. Aagaard

Indiana Law Journal

It is time to rethink the domination of environmental law by a canon of major federal statutes enacted in the 1970s. Environmental law is in a malaise. Despite widespread agreement that existing laws are inadequate to address current environmental problems, Congress has not passed a major environmental statute in more than twenty years. If it is to succeed, the environmental law of this new century may need to evolve into something that looks quite different than the extant environmental law canon. The next generation of environmental laws must be viable for creation and implementation even in an antagonistic political climate ...

An Other History Of Knowledge And Decision In Precautionary Approaches To Sustainability, Saptarishi Bandopadhyay

Saptarishi Bandopadhyay

In this paper, I offer an alternative reading of precaution with the hope of recovering the capacity of this ethic to facilitate legal and political decisions. Despite being a popular instrument of international environmental governance, decision-makers continue to understand this principle as reflecting an immemorial and natural instinct for preserving the environment in cases of scientific uncertainty. Such a reading, however, ignores the history and moral basis underlying this principle and thereby renders it obvious, and automatically adaptable to the politics of Sustainable Development.

By offering a thicker history of precautionary governance at exemplary moments of ecological crisis I trace ...

Preventing Cold War: Militarization In The Southernmost Continent And The Antarctic Treaty System's Fading Effectiveness, Dillon A. Redding

Dillon A Redding

This note argues that the preservation of Antarctica for peaceful research and internationally cooperative activity as envisioned originally by the Antarctic Treaty in 1961 has gone unrealized amid growing international interest in the strategic advantages offered by Antarctica, including the possibility of large swathes of mineral deposits and optimal locations for satellite stations. Part 1 describes the motivations behind the Antarctic Treaty System (ATS) and outlines the relevant provisions of the Antarctic Treaty. Part 2 examines the military advantages to a state presence in Antarctica and the ways in which the ATS allows for such a presence to be carried ...

A Federal Safety Plug With A Few Leaks: Bureau Of Land Management's Proposed Rule On Hydraulic Fracturing And Its Effect On States And Tribes, Thea A. Graybill

Thea A Graybill

Natural gas is a significant energy source, but if extracted improperly, has the potential to cause serious harm to public health and the environment. Currently, states regulate hydraulic fracturing, and each state has its own regulatory standards. Consequently, states control the hydraulic fracturing industry in a piecemeal fashion. In some instances, state governance of hydraulic fracturing has led to disastrous results. For example, numerous people have complained that the drilling of natural gas polluted private water wells in Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia, and Texas. To avoid these types of incidents in the future, the federal government should regulate hydraulic fracturing ...

(Don’T) See More Butts: Preemption And Local Regulation Of Cigarette Litter, Mike Freiberg

Hamline Law Review

abstract

One-Step Forward: The D.C. Circuit Provides Clarity To The Incremental Approach To Rulemaking, Cory Lewis

Boston College Environmental Affairs Law Review

In 2011, EPA issued the Deferral Rule, excusing generators of biogenic b-CO2—emitted from the combustion of biological materials—from Clean Air Act (CAA) regulations for three years. Citing the need to study b-CO2, EPA invoked three legal doctrines to justify the rule: the de minimus, one-step-at-a-time, and administrative necessity doctrines. This Comment addresses Center for Biological Diversity v. Environmental Protection Agency, where the Center for Biological Diversity challenged the Deferral Rule in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. The D.C. Circuit vacated the rule. Although the court did not decide the issue of ...

The Public Right-To-Know On A Need-To-Know Basis: Striking The Balance Between National Security And Environmental Protection, Brian Reilly

Boston College Environmental Affairs Law Review

Enforcing environmental laws does not immediately appear to be fundamentally inconsistent with maintaining national security. Many people have criticized the Emergency Planning and Community Right to Know Act, however, as potentially placing American citizens at risk of a terrorist attack. This Note discusses the difficulties associated with striking the balance between giving citizens access to important environmental information while limiting terrorists’ ability to misuse that same information. Although this issue is a difficult one on its own, it is compounded by recent developments affecting standing in environmental citizen suits. This Note argues that even if the proper balance is struck ...

Nuclear Facility Licensing, Terrorist Threats, And Nepa Section 102(2)(C) Compliance, Michael Deiulis

Boston College Environmental Affairs Law Review

The conflicting decisions for the Courts of Appeals for the Third and Ninth Circuits in New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection v. Nuclear Regulatory Commission and San Luis Obispo Mothers for Peace v. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, respectively, leave it an open question outside those jurisdictions whether the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) must account for the environmental impacts of terrorism under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) § 102(2)(C). Courts should follow the Ninth Circuit’s approach of requiring such an analysis because the impacts of terrorism are not too far removed from the underlying agency action. Although programmatic treatment ...

Can We (Anti)Trust Leed?: An Analysis Of The Antitrust Implications For The Green Building Movement, Jessica Alfano

Boston College Environmental Affairs Law Review

Sustainable construction and energy efficient structures are en vogue, and a “green building movement” has produced buildings all over the country and the world that are constructed from sustainable, energy efficient materials meant to minimize the building’s impact on the environment. A leader in this movement is the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC), a private, non-profit organization that stresses sustainability in all areas of construction. The USGBC’s flagship work is a rating system called Leadership in Environmental Design (LEED) that measures and endorses the sustainability of a building. The success of this movement in general and the ...

An American Icon In Limbo: How Clarifying The Standing Doctrine Could Free Wild Horses And Empower Advocates, Nadia Aksentijevich

Boston College Environmental Affairs Law Review

The American wild horse has long been considered a cultural icon and an integral part of the ecosystem. In recognition of the need for wild horse protection, Congress enacted the Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act in 1971. Although the Act instructs Congress to manage the wild horse population by removing “excess” wild horses from public lands, it does not explicitly provide for the use of short- or long-term holding facilities as a means for removal. In considering the legality of the use of holding facilities in the service of wild horse removal programs that the plaintiffs deplore, two district ...

Sub-Seabed Burial Of Nuclear Waste: If The Disposal Method Could Succeed Technically, Could It Also Succeed Legally?, Amal Bala

Boston College Environmental Affairs Law Review

Nuclear power is a relatively familiar method of generating electricity in the United States, but the process remains controversial because of high-level radioactive waste. Conventional nuclear reactors use uranium fuel to sustain nuclear fission, but eventually such fuel becomes spent and requires storage and disposal because of its dangerous radioactive properties. The United States produces a large amount of nuclear waste every year but has struggled to develop a long-term disposal strategy. America favors land-based disposal methods and is not giving serious consideration to alternative methods, including sub-seabed burial. This Note discusses preliminary research on sub-seabed burial of nuclear waste ...

Confusing Regulatory Takings With Regulatory Exactions: The Supreme Court Gets Lost In The Swamp Of Koontz, Israel Piedra

Boston College Environmental Affairs Law Review

In 2013, the Supreme Court concluded that monetary exactions must be considered with the same judicial scrutiny as land exactions. Land exactions are required contributions from an individual to a government entity in exchange for approval to develop real property. Land exactions proposed by regulatory bodies must be roughly proportional and bear a nexus to the development permit requested, otherwise the exaction constitutes a taking in violation of the Fifth Amendment. In Koontz v. St. Johns River Management District, the Supreme Court extended the nexus/rough proportionality test to instances in which government bodies impose monetary conditions on land development ...

Will Arkansas Game & Fish Commission V. United States Provide A Permanent Fix For Temporary Takings?, Brian T. Hodges

Boston College Environmental Affairs Law Review

The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Arkansas Game & Fish Commission v. United States recognized that any government action that interferes with the enjoyment and use of private property—whether permanent or temporary in duration—can give rise to a claim under the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment. Yet dicta in the decision left many pondering whether significantly different tests will apply depending on the duration of the government invasion. This Article reviews the state of the law regarding temporary physical takings both before and after Arkansas Game & Fish with particular regard to the test applicable to physical ...

Carbon Outlasts The Law: States Walk The Constitutional Line, Steven Ferrey

Boston College Environmental Affairs Law Review

State carbon policies to control climate warming and our energy future are under legal attack. A successful barrage of litigation now invokes the dormant Commerce Clause and the Federal Power Act as interpreted through the Filed Rate Doctrine, as well as the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution, to challenge the legal validity and sustainability of these state carbon-based laws. California and other states have survived these legal challenges sparingly, and then often only by prevailing with procedural defenses that dismiss the case before a decision on the legal merits of their state energy regulation. This Article examines and ...

The Presentment Clause Meets The Suspension Power: The Affordable Care Act’S Long And Winding Road To Implementation, Mitchell Widener

Mitchell Widener

The presentment clause MEETs the Suspension Power: The Affordable Care Act’s Long and Winding Road to Implementation

Mitchell J. Widener

Abstract

To enact a law, the Presentment Clause of the Constitution mandates that both Houses of Congress present a bill to the President who either signs it into law or vetoes it. The Founders included this provision to prevent presidents from emulating King James II, who would routinely suspend Parliament’s laws to favor political constituents. Additionally, the Presentment Clause served to enhance the separation-of-powers principle implied in the Constitution.

Within the past year, President Obama has suspended multiple ...

Wildearth Guardians V. Jewell, 738 F.3d 298 (D.C. Cir. 2013), Ross Keogh

Public Land and Resources Law Review

As part of a comprehensive strategy to keep coal “in the ground,” environmental plaintiffs challenged the BLM’s leasing of federally owned coal tracts in the Powder River Basin in 2010 on climate change grounds. WildEarth Guardians was the first suit to reach a federal circuit court, where the District of Columbia Circuit Court affirmed that the BLM’s environmental analysis of the climate change impacts of the leased coal was adequate under NEPA. Notably, in reversing the district court, the circuit court found that the plaintiffs had procedural standing.

Interactions Between Public And Private Resource Governance: Key Insights From The Fisheries Case, Zdravka Tzankova

Zdravka Tzankova

Growing in presence and visibility, eco-labels and other forms of green certification are the more obvious signs of a broader social and policy phenomenon: the rise of private regulation and nonstate, market-based governance of environmental and resource practices. The growth of private regulatory initiatives, especially initiatives led by NGOs and other civil society actors, is increasingly accompanied by concerns over their potential to detract from public, government regulation.

This paper seeks to generate insights on the nature and consequences of interaction between more traditional forms of public, government regulation and the growing realm of market-based regulation by nonstate actors. It ...

Should Chevron Have Two Steps?, Richard M. Re

Indiana Law Journal

Prominent judges and scholars have criticized the familiar Chevron deference scheme on the ground that its two steps are redundant. But each step of traditional two-step Chevron actually does unique interpretive work. In short, step one asks whether agency interpretations are mandatory, whereas step two asks whether they are reasonable. Other judges and scholars defend two-step Chevron on the ground that the second step should be equated with arbitrary-and-capricious review. But that approach makes Chevron partially redundant with the Administrative Procedure Act and compresses the distinct mandatoriness and reasonableness questions into an artificially singular first step. This Article identifies a ...