Digital Commons Network^™

How Climate Change And Environmental Policies Affect Impoverished Communities, Nicole Skala

Journal of Race, Gender, and Ethnicity

Climate change is a global problem that affects everyone, but not proportionately. Lower income communities face greater physical and economic impacts, and policies often fail to consider their needs. These communities struggle to adapt and recover from disasters due to limited resources, and they lack access to resilient housing. Major corporations like Exxon and Shell profit while their workers are underpaid for dangerous labor. Historically, regions like rural Appalachia have seen exploitation through industries like coal. People of Color (POC) communities experience environmental racism, suffering greater environmental harm due to systemic neglect. Increasing commodity costs can hurt lower income individuals, …

Regulation Of Ocean Alkalinity Enhancement In Washington State, Ashwin Murthy, Korey Silverman-Roati, Romany M. Webb

Sabin Center for Climate Change Law

This paper focuses on one commonly-discussed ocean carbon dioxide removal approach, ocean alkalinity enhancement (“OAE”), which involves adding alkaline substances to ocean waters in order to increase their ability to uptake carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. OAE also has the potential to mitigate ocean acidification, which has been worsening globally due to climate change, and has threatened marine life and industries in places like Washington State.

There is significant interest in pursuing OAE off the coast of Washington state. This paper examines the legal framework for OAE projects in Washington State. As we explain, OAE projects conducted in near-shore areas …

West Virginia V. Epa: Considerations For The Future Of Epa Greenhouse Gas Regulation, Shavonnie R. Carthens

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

When compared to historical levels, the air quality in the United States has improved. However, exposure to air pollution still rises to the top of environmental health risks experienced by Americans. It is estimated that one hundred thousand to two hundred thousand deaths annually are associated with this exposure, which exceeds the deaths from murders and car crashes combined. Further, evidence establishes that “rising concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane, and other greenhouse gases pose serious threats to public health.” Looking to the sources of greenhouse gas emissions, fossil fuel-fired power plants are the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in …

West Virginia V. Epa: Consideration For The Future Of Epa Greenhouse Gas Regulation, Shavonnie R. Carthens

Kentucky Journal of Equine, Agriculture, & Natural Resources Law

In this article, Shavonnie Carthens examines the implications of West Virginia v. EPA, emphasizing how the Supreme Court’s use of the major questions doctrine creates uncertainty around the Environmental Protection Agency’s (“EPA”) authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. It argues that, in light of the doctrine’s growing influence and the end of Chevron deference, Congress should revise the Clean Air Act to explicitly authorize the EPA to regulate greenhouse emissions through system-based transitions to cleaner power-generating sources, public health-conscious considerations, and multi-agency regulatory approaches to ensure durable and effective climate policy.

Pesticide Lies! A Call For Epa Action As Recent Judicial Decisions Reveal The Harmful Truth Resulting From Exposure, Stevi Whitman

Kentucky Journal of Equine, Agriculture, & Natural Resources Law

In this note, Stevi Whitman analyzes the dangers of weak pesticide regulation in the United States. Whitman explains that the EPA’s reliance on the vague “unreasonable adverse effects” standard under the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA) allows harmful products like Roundup to remain on the market despite strong evidence of health risks. Whitman argues for strengthening U.S. pesticide laws to match the European Union’s stricter safety threshold. She proposes amending FIFRA to require proactive bans on hazardous pesticides and greater accountability from manufacturers to better protect public health and the environment.

Resistance: The Mura Struggle Against Canadian Potash Mining In Brazil’S Amazon, Cardozo Law Institute In Holocaust And Human Rights (Clihhr), Federal University Of Rio Grande Do Sul, Graduate Program In Law (Ppgd/Ufrgs), International Human Rights Program (Ihrp), University Of Toronto Jackman Law, Observatory Of Socio-Environmental Law And Human Rights In The Amazon (Odsdh/Ufam)

CLIHHR Reports & Policy Submissions

A comprehensive human rights and environmental report documenting the Mura Indigenous people’s resistance to Brazil Potash’s Autazes Potash Project in the Brazilian Amazon. The report details environmental risks, human rights violations, failures in consultation processes, litigation history, corporate accountability, and the ongoing struggle for land demarcation.

An Ecofeminist Approach To Climate Risks, Angela Hefti

Michigan Journal of International Law

Climate change poses significant risks to the human right to life. However, international adjudicators have either neglected to examine right to life claims in the context of climate risks or dismissed them as prospective and speculative. International human rights bodies have long applied the standard of imminence to determine whether a threat to the right to life exists and the extent to which it constitutes a violation. In climate change cases, this standard has hardened, requiring a tight temporal connection between climate risks and a violation of the right to life. This article argues that failing to recognize the impact …

Zoning The Subsurface, Hannah Jacobs Wiseman, Anne Menefee, Seth Blumsack, Michael Helbing

Faculty Scholarship

The vast rock formations underlying the United States stand at an important Demsetzian turning point, at which the externalities of inadequately defined property rights justify the costs of solidifying formal property rights for this resource. This need arises from the growing scarcity of pore space (tiny openings) in subsurface rocks—property that is critical to address climate change. Efforts to mitigate and adapt to climate impacts require large-scale underground storage of carbon dioxide, water, and energy within the pore space of subsurface reservoirs. The subsurface will also continue to house millions of miles of pipelines, hundreds of thousands of waste disposal …

Destroy, Rebuild, Repeat: How To Break The Climate Disaster Cycle, Mark P. Nevitt

Faculty Articles

Climate change is fundamentally reshaping how we live, where we live, and whether we invest in or retreat from climate-exposed communities—but climate and disaster law is not changing with the climate. This legal latency is driven by antiquated statutes, doctrines, and policies that have not kept pace with the climate moment. Ex ante adaptation decisions governing where to live are life and death choices that shape ex post disaster response. Laws and policies should facilitate sound climate decisionmaking, but too often they frustrate individual and governmental decisions on whether to stay or retreat. In this Article, I argue that laws …

Renewable Energy Federalism 2.0, Danielle Stokes

Law Faculty Publications

Much like climate change, the clean energy transition presents a “super wicked” problem that is further complicated by prioritizing justice. History has taught us that government regulation, industry innovation, and community engagement are the catalysts of effective transitions. Similarly, the just energy transition requires the support of these interconnected networks. This Essay offers sustainable collaborative governance as a theoretical framework through which decision-makers may filter their assessments, industry can model its metrics, and community can develop language to articulate its needs. Sustainable collaborative governance is also a means of navigating the complexities of renewable energy siting and regulation while fostering …

The Color Of Carbon: Racial Capitalism, Climate Change, And Law, Sumudu Atapattu, Carmen G. Gonzalez

Faculty Publications & Other Works

Climate change is a direct consequence of capitalism’s drive to maximize profits through the unbridled extraction of wealth from humans and nature, aided and abetted at every turn by law. In its voracious demand for cheap labor, cheap raw materials, and cheap waste disposal, capitalism has created a treadmill of fossil fuel–dependent production and consumption that has triggered a planetary emergency. It has also produced extreme economic inequality—a racialized division of wealth grounded in colonialism that enables the ultrarich to capture the spoils of the capitalist global economy while billions of people continue to live in extreme poverty. The articles …

A Human Right To A Sustainable Climate?, Ottavio Quirico

William & Mary Environmental Law and Policy Review

Is a fundamental right to a sustainable climate progressively being recognized globally? Climate change is triggering parallel progressive developments in the human rights arena at both the domestic and international levels. Firstly, it is fostering an extensive interpretation of first- and second-generation human rights, protecting collective environmental interests rather than individual entitlements. Secondly, climate change has decisively accelerated the evolution of first and second generation human rights into a third generation right to a sustainable environment. Thirdly, emerging evidence discloses the possibility of conceiving a specific human right to a sustainable climate. This Article explores the trajectory of climate rights …

Lessons Learned From The Mountain Valley Pipeline: Can Nature's Rights Or Environmental Justice Be The New Mvps In Pipeline Litigation?, Caitlin Kwalwasser

William & Mary Environmental Law and Policy Review

This Note will provide an introduction and proscriptive application of two litigation strategies for future pipeline litigation by using the MVP [Mountain Valley Pipeline] as a case study: (1) environmental justice and (2) nature’s rights. To understand how these strategies differ from the present, Part I will first examine the primary way opponents sought to prevent construction in the case of the MVP: challenging agency findings. Then, Part II will provide context for the two proposed litigation strategies. Finally, Part III will describe possibilities for how these strategies might be employed to prevent the construction of future pipelines.

This Note …

The Real Story Of Nepa Litigation In Clean Energy Permitting, Anna Mance

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

Environmental protections and the processes of the administrative state are under attack. In recent years, the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) has drawn outsized criticism from across the political and legal spectrum as a major impediment to climate friendly infrastructure and the clean energy transition. NEPA enables private groups to challenge development through litigation. Critics are moving to strip public oversight over federal permitting based on claims that these private groups bring largely frivolous environmental claims to court, driving up costs for developers and delaying progress responding to climate change. But is this really true?

Drawing on an original dataset …

Prisons Built On Toxic Sites: Eighth Amendment Protections For Pregnant Incarcerated Persons, Bianca Stockmeier

Public Interest Law Reporter

No abstract provided.

Teaching At The Intersection Of Federal Indian Law And Environmental Law Courses, Mia Montoya Hammersley, Vanessa Ann Racehorse, Heather Tanana, Nadine Padilla, Gerald Torres

Publications

A discussion of the important role of Federal Indian Law in the practice of environmental and natural resources law and guidance on incorporating this intersection into traditional environmental law courses and curricula.

Front Matter, Colorado Environmental Law Journal

Colorado Environmental Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Editor's Note, Emily Derrenbacker

Colorado Environmental Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Table Of Contents, Colorado Environmental Law Journal

Colorado Environmental Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Towards Multispecies Environmental Justice, Laura Street Cole

Colorado Environmental Law Journal

No abstract provided.

The Environmental Cost Of Intelligence: Regulating The Climate Impact Of Artificial Intelligence, Emilee Calvin

Colorado Environmental Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Still Silent: How The U.S. Regulatory Framework Fails To Address The Dangers Of Pesticides, Obie Johnson

Colorado Environmental Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Ski Resorts And Rural Energy Resiliency: How Colorado’S Ski Industry Could Help Reduce Energy Vulnerability In Rural Mountain Communities, Jonathan Skule

Colorado Environmental Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Unveiling The Environmental Impact Of Large Language Models On Indigenous Communities: A Call For Action And Liability, Nina-Simone Edwards

Library Scholarship

Large Language Models (LLMs) have rapidly gained popularity for their language generation and comprehension capabilities, promising increased efficiency in various sectors. However, while celebrated for their transformative potential, LLMs exacerbate current climate issues. This Article highlights the detrimental environmental footprint of LLMs, with a focus on their role in escalating climate change and their disproportionate effects on Indigenous communities. These communities, closely tied to their land, bear the brunt of environmental degradation, further aggravated by LLM-induced emissions.

This Article first dissects the interplay between environmental justice and technological innovation, advocating for a reevaluation of the trust relationship between tribal nations …

A Critical Juncture: The Convergence Of Natural Resource Management And Tribal Sovereignty, Anna Aleta Butterfield

Graduate Student Portfolios, Professional Papers, and Capstone Projects

This portfolio reflects the work I’ve done in my four years as a dual degree student, pursuing a Master of Science in Environmental Studies and a juris doctorate degree, and focuses on policies and laws surrounding natural resource management. It touches on how those policies relate to and expand or constrict the exercise of sovereignty by indigenous populations.

This piece first considers the effects of plastic on salmon populations and those indigenous groups that rely on salmon for subsistence and cultural purposes. The remaining three pieces focus on various aspects of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes - Montana Water …

Examining State Climate Superfund Legislation, Madison Calhoun, Rachel Rothschild, Jonathan Binder, Elenda Mihaly, Justin Mankin, Ben Lippard, Mary Wood

Articles

There has been an influx of “climate superfund” bills introduced and adopted in state legislatures across the country. Modeled after the federal Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA), these laws are designed to recover costs from large emitters of greenhouse gases (GHGs) to pay for climate adaptation infrastructure. Following CERCLA’s strict liability framework, major polluters in New York and Vermont would be required to pay into state-managed funds in proportion to their shares of total GHG emissions; California, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Oregon have proposed similar bills. On March 19, 2025, the Environmental Law Institute hosted a …

The Historic Superfund Listing Of The Lukachukai Mountains Mining District, Nadine Padilla

Faculty Scholarship

President Biden’s 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law included, among its many provisions, a historic investment of $3.5 billion to be allocated toward cleanups under the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA), also known as Superfund. This investment will help in addressing the problem of legacy pollution that impacts communities across the country. Approximately $1 billion will go towards clearing the backlog of 49 previously unfunded Superfund sites and will accelerate cleanup at over 85 current Superfund sites. Remaining funds will go towards launching cleanup efforts at 25 new Superfund sites. In a development that aligns with these broader cleanup …

Living The Good Life In The Anthropocene, Danielle Stokes

Law Faculty Publications

The Stockholm Resilience Centre has concluded that the number of “planetary boundaries” we are crossing has increased from three in 2009, when the Centre’s researchers first introduced the concept, to six in 2023. Crossing these boundaries means humans are changing basic attributes of planetary systems to the point of risking the future of civilization. And the distinction between “safe” and “just” planetary boundaries raises questions regarding how to conceptualize the “good life.” In this latest in a biannual series of essays, members of the Environmental Law Collaborative explore conceptions of the “good” as well as the various elements necessary to …

Ecosocialism, Degrowth, And Global South Thought: Critical Legal Transformations, Nicholas F. Stump

William & Mary Environmental Law and Policy Review

This Article explores how Critical Legal Research (CLR) can help drive transformations of our ecological political economy towards true system change. CLR entails a critical legal theory–informed approach to legal and broader socio-legal research. After articulating the CLR framework, this Article explores its potential in the context of leading and intertwined bodies of theory for transformative change: ecosocialism, degrowth, and Global South and Indigenous thought. Next, this Article offers concrete avenues to help pursue such emancipatory change—i.e., specifically focusing on the popular conception of an “ecosocialist transition.” Ecosocialist transition strategies include non-reformist reforms, dual power, a radical just transition, and …

Streamlining Wildlife Regulation, Robert L. Fischman

Articles by Maurer Faculty

A recent burst of revisions in the bedrock regulations governing projects that may adversely affect wildlife represents a generational shift in policy. Streamlining federal decision -making drove much of this reform. Streamlining offers a path to address climate change without abandoning a longstanding commitment to wildlife conservation. The conservation community recognizes the need to build new infrastructure to reduce the rate of climate change through air emissions. The most urgent priority is decarbonizing the electrical ~rid through renewable energy generation and a better transmission network. Adaptation to the "new abnormal" of climate-driven environmental disruption demands federal approvals for a host …