Digital Commons Network^™

Beyond Tree Planting In Urban Forest Climate Adaptation Actions, Michael T. Yadrick Jr., Lisa A. Ciecko, Weston Brinkley

Cities and the Environment (CATE)

Forests in cities, and the communities that steward and benefit from them, face significant disruption due to climate change. It is now time to build the capacity in our institutions and in forested natural areas to help navigate multiple overlapping crises and systems change. This case study from Seattle, Washington provides perspective on how to mitigate climate change beyond tree planting.

Natural Resource Conflict And Socioenvironmental Resistance In Arctic States: Assessing Domestic Risks To Circumpolar Security, Jen Evans

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

How does climate change contribute to domestic natural resource conflict and socioenvironmental resistance in the Arctic? The literature assumes that developed Arctic nations possess sufficient state capacity to overcome risks of domestic conflict and unrest posed by regional development and environmental change. Arctic policy correspondingly focuses on natural resource competition, disputes, and conflict at the international level. The mechanisms and processes of domestic natural resource conflict and socioenvironmental resistance in the Arctic have thus been largely ignored in the literature, even though 27 cases of contention have occurred since the ‘shock’ sea-ice melt of 2007.

In this study, I draw …

Energy Justice And Renewable Rikers, Rebecca Bratspies

University of Miami Law Review

Unsustainable energy practices generate the lion’s share of global carbon emissions as well as staggering levels of deadly particulate pollution. Replacing the current dirty, fossil fuel-based system with affordable, clean energy is both a human rights imperative and a climate change necessity. This transition, which has already begun, creates the opportunity to do things differently. By confronting the structural racism embedded in existing energy structures, we can build a just transition rather than just a transition. This Article uses New York City’s Renewable Rikers project as a case study to explore how we might take advantage of the intersections between …

Public Health Impacts And Intra-Urban Forced Displacement Due To Climate Gentrification In The Greater Miami Area—Community Lawyering For Environmental Justice And Equitable Development, Theresa Pinto, Abigail L. Fleming, Sabrina Payoute, Elissa Klein

University of Miami Law Review

Because Miami-Dade County is “ground zero” for such climate effects as sea-level rise and increasingly hazardous, climate-driven Atlantic hurricanes, the coral rock ridge that runs along the Eastern coast of South Florida is a prime target for redevelopment and “climate” gentrification. Through a community and movement lawyering for environmental justice approach, we partnered with local community organizations to contribute to the ongoing work of community-driven equitable development. In partnership, we developed an environmental public health study to understand and document the public health effects on disadvantaged communities in Miami-Dade County from forced intra-urban displacement due to redevelopment that is being …

Is Northwest Indiana Prepared To Be A “Climate Haven”?, Luke Carl Jorgensen

The Journal of Purdue Undergraduate Research

No abstract provided.

Labor Rights In The Anthropocene: The Effects Of Climate Change On Undocumented Farm Workers, Sophia Anderson

Seattle Journal for Social Justice

No abstract provided.

Beyond The Classroom: Influence Of A Sustainability Intervention On University Students’ Environmental Knowledge And Behaviors, Dawn Christina Null, Kristin Hurst, Leslie A. Duram

Publications

On college campuses, environmental science education largely takes place in classrooms, thereby limiting impact on the full student body. By implementing an educational intervention in an informal campus setting, this study tested an approach aimed at expanding the reach of environmental learning. Students at a mid-size Midwestern university were exposed to a food-focused environmental and climate education intervention consisting of sustainability trivia and marketing materials displayed in dining halls. Prior to exposure, students completed a pre-test, followed by a 5-week intervention, then a post-test. Comparing correct responses between pre-test and post-test, we found a significant increase in environmental and climate …

Addressing The Climate Crisis Through Science And Art: The Value Of Interdisciplinary And Intergenerational Team Teaching, Megan Jacobs, Kineo Memmer

Honors in Practice Online Archive

The climate crisis is a growing concern for many people, especially those who are of college age, making it an important and pressing issue to explore in honors courses. Eco-Art: Using Art to Reconcile with the Climate Crisis, a University of New Mexico (UNM) Honors College course, integrates the disciplines of art and environmental justice to examine climate change and address the social and emotional toll of climate grief. The class was co-created and team taught by Associate Professor Megan Jacobs and UNM undergraduate honors and environmental science student Kineo Memmer. This article unpacks the methodologies and lessons learned from …

Differential Impacts Of Weather Anomalies On Household Energy Expenditure Shares: A Comparison Of Clustered Panel Analysis Methods, Jordan Champion

Theses and Dissertations--Agricultural Economics

Recent emphasis on environmental justice has highlighted deficiencies in our energy system that produce disparities in accessibility and affordability for the most vulnerable. Meanwhile, the realities of a gradually warming climate and the onset of a global energy crisis (IEA 2022) have coincidently contributed to spikes in both energy prices and demand. These implications threaten to further exacerbate existing disparities for income-constrained and vulnerable populations, enhancing their risk of falling into prolonged insecurity. To ensure our transition to a just, sustainable future, we must first ensure equitable access to affordable and reliable energy for everyone. Combining household-level panel and state-level …

Updates In Air Pollution: Current Research And Future Challenges, Dwan Vilcins, Rebecca C. Christofferson, Jin Ho Yoon, Siti Nurshahida Nazli, Peter D. Sly, Stephania A. Cormier, Guofeng Shen

Division of Basic Science Faculty Publications

Background: The United Nations has declared that humans have a right to clean air. Despite this, many deaths and disability-adjusted life years are attributed to air pollution exposure each year. We face both challenges to air quality and opportunities to improve, but several areas need to be addressed with urgency. Objective: This paper summarises the recent research presented at the Pacific Basin Consortium for Environment and Health Symposium and focuses on three key areas of air pollution that are important to human health and require more research. Findings and conclusion: Indoor spaces are commonly places of exposure to poor air …

Virtual Energy, Joel B. Eisen, Felix Mormann, Heather E. Payne

Faculty Scholarship

From employment to education, many areas of our daily lives have gone virtual, including the virtual workplace and virtual classes. By comparison, the way we generate, deliver, and consume electricity is an anachronism. And the electric industry’s outdated business model and regulatory framework are failing. For the last century-and-a-half, we have relied on ever larger power plants to generate the electricity we consume, often hundreds of miles away from the point of production. But the outsized carbon footprint of these power plants and the need to transmit their output over long distances threaten the electric grid’s reliability, affordability, and long-term …

Climate Risk, Insurance Retreat, And State Response, Mark P. Nevitt, Michael Pappas

Faculty Articles

Climate change is fundamentally destabilizing the private insurance industry, with many high-profile insurance companies exiting states in the face of catastrophic, climate-­induced risk. This rapid "insurance retreat" represents a major market signal in response to climate-exacerbated risks. Private businesses are making actuarial decisions, assessing that some locations are just too vulnerable to insure. At the same time, this insurance retreat also poses a policy challenge for states as they react to the mounting insurance gaps left by exiting private insurers.

This Article analyzes insurance retreat, its attendant policy challenges, and the lessons that can be drawn from state responses. It …

Virtual Energy, Joel B. Eisen

Law Faculty Publications

From employment to education, many areas of our daily lives have gone virtual, including the virtual workplace and virtual classes. By comparison, the way we generate, deliver, and consume electricity is an anachronism. And the electric industry’s outdated business model and regulatory framework are failing. For the last century-and-a-half, we have relied on ever larger power plants to generate the electricity we consume, often hundreds of miles away from the point of production. But the outsized carbon footprint of these power plants and the need to transmit their output over long distances threaten the electric grid’s reliability, affordability, and long-term …

It’S Giving Genocide: What Feminist Theory, Indigenous Thought, And Queer Theory Have To Say About Climate Change, Owen George

MS in Environmental Studies Master's Theses

Climate change is having profound impacts on communities around the world. In some cases, and with time, more and more, the impacts of climate change are happening on a level that constitutes genocide. Raphaël Lemkin’s and Claudia Card’s definitions of genocide are most applicable to climate change as they have broader understandings of victim groups and social death, and they recognize that inaction to prevent reasonably foreseeable harm constitutes genocidal intent. The UN’s more rigid definition does, to a lesser extent, also apply to climate change. Across the three definitions examined here, the argument of climate change as genocide is …

Racial Capitalism, Climate Change, And Ecocide, Carmen G. Gonzalez

Faculty Publications & Other Works

Lawyers, scholars, and activists have long sought to incorporate ecocide into the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court to address corporate and governmental impunity for massive and severe ecological damage, including the harms caused by climate change. This Article uses the framework of racial capitalism to examine and critique the proposed criminalization of ecocide. Coined by South African scholars and activists and refined by political theorist Cedric Robinson, the theory of racial capitalism offers valuable insights on the root causes of the climate crisis and the manifold injustices it inflicts on marginalized states and peoples. While most discussions of …

Carbon Pricing For A Just Transition, Jeff Todd

University of Colorado Law Review

The legal tools to avoid the potential disasters of climate change are already available, at least according to economists. Economists overwhelmingly prefer carbon pricing tools like carbon taxes and cap-and-trade programs to combat climate change and guide the energy transition. Carbon pricing is more cost effective at lowering carbon and other greenhouse gases (GHGs) than other legal options such as efficiency standards, renewable portfolio standards, subsidies, and tax credits and deductions. Unlike those other options, carbon pricing targets both the supply of and the demand for GHG-emitting products and services; moreover, it gives firms and consumers flexibility in how best …

U.S. National Security And Climate Change, Alexandra E. Koch, Nicole K. Carle, Gregory P. Noone

Case Western Reserve Journal of International Law

As sea temperatures rise and natural disasters intensify, it is critical that the U.S. national security strategy actively include plans to account for global climate change and address the complex environmental and humanitarian challenges that parallel and are driven by rising temperatures, such as resource scarcity, forced displacement, and regional instability. Climate change acts as a “threat multiplier for instability” in some of the most volatile regions of the world and can contribute to rising tensions even in historically stable regions. Climate change can also lead to increased vulnerability of military infrastructure and logistics, undermine military readiness, and demand a …

From Redlining To Greenlining, Danielle Stokes

Law Faculty Publications

For generations, marginalized communities have been impacted by discriminatory land use, zoning, and property valuation policies, from redlining in the 1930s to the siting of undesirable land uses that persists today. Because of these policies, marginalized communities are forced to contend with low property values, substandard infrastructure, and increased health risks. The very same mechanisms that created these injustices, however, may now be key to addressing them. This Article introduces “greenlining” as a land use planning mechanism that seeks to remediate historical housing, siting, and economic disparities while forging a path toward energy and environmental justice. Greenlining, the productive and …

Net Zero And Settler Futurity, Jesse Goldstein

Sociology Publications

Net Zero ideology promises that current and ongoing emissions can be partially offset by ‘negative emissions’ strategies such as carbon capture and sequestration, allowing carbon intensive firms to narrate themselves as agents that are solving – not causing – the climate crisis. This represents a shift in liberal and corporate environmentalism away from both denial and delay, towards a new strategy acknowledging the need to end fossil fuel use while urgently deferring transformations to a future made possible by not-yet developed technological innovations. This paper argues that a through-line of settler futurity provides affective infrastructure potent enough to transect opposing …

Symposium On New Mexico's Just Transition, Melanie Coffing, Logan Stokes

Natural Resources Journal

A Just Transition aims to develop capacity for a low-carbon, climate-resilient economy while maximizing benefits and minimizing hardships for working communities. The ideation and implementation of such a sweeping, intersectional policy framework requires thoughtful conversation, collaborative action, and years of dedication from community members and policy makers alike. On November 3, 2023, the Natural Resources Journal, through the University of New Mexico School of Law, and the New Mexico Speaker of the House, Javier Martínez, hosted the Symposium on New Mexico’s Just Transition. Students from the law school and the Natural Resources Journal had the opportunity to collaborate with community …

Climate Change Will Make The Final Call In New Mexico's Groundwater Appropriation, Lauren Hewitt

Natural Resources Journal

No abstract provided.

The Climate Crisis And The Class System: An Ethical Analysis, Alia Baig

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

Climate change is a concerning subject that more and more people are beginning to care about. The climate crisis is continuing to affect populations across the globe and shows no signs of slowing. While everyone has been affected by climate change in some capacity, the climate crisis disproportionately affects low-income communities around the world and, specifically, within the United States. I plan to research the ethics of the relationship between climate change and the class system and the goal o f this project is to prove the claim that the class system is the reason for climate change's disproportionate effect …

Wildfires, Climate, And Equity: Towards Sustainable Forest Management And Conservation, Mark Regier Kreider

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Forest and conservation sciences are both fields that inherently combine land and people, concerning topics such as the wildfire crisis, impacts of human-caused climate change on ecosystem functioning, and inequity of access to outdoor spaces. The research and science communication in this PhD dissertation explore these issues, integrating the biophysical and social sciences to promote understanding, stewardship, and conservation of human-forest systems. Chapter 1 assesses how humans shape patterns of fire through fire suppression, inadvertently ensuring that fires occur under the most severe conditions and effectively selecting for high-severity fire occurrences. Chapter 2 uses a wilderness area with a fire …

Tracing Socio-Ecological Resilience In The Milpa, The Monte, And The Kitchen: Milpero And Campesino Perspectives From Tiholop, Yucatan And La Union Libertad, Oaxaca, Mexico, Marisela Chavez

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Agrobiodiversity, the diversity of crops that been co-produced through humanenvironment interactions over millennia, constitutes an important part of humanity’s cultural heritage. Agrobiodiversity is as much about the local ecosystem and biotic resources, such as soil, water, pollinators, and microbes, as it is about human processes like sociocultural and linguistic practices, including farming methods, knowledge, skills, and natural resource management. At the center of these dynamics are the smallholder farmers who engage in a range of stewardship practices that contribute to the diversification and evolution of the native crops that in turn support their food security. This research focuses on understanding …

The Once And Future Clean Air Act: Impacts Of The Inflation Reduction Act On Epa's Regulatory Authority, Nicholas Bryner

Journal Articles

The Clean Air Act is one of Congress's greatest success stories. The major piece of legislation, passed in the context of environmental and public health crises, has driven technological change through regulation that has dramatically improved air quality even in a prolonged period of economic growth. In the context of climate change, however, despite many efforts since the 1990s, the Clean Air Act has not proven to be a successful legislative tool. Instead, the Act has faced complex obstacles in the statutory language and a trend in Supreme Court jurisprudence-leading up to and including the June 2022 decision in West …

Legal Hurdles And Pathways: The Evolution (Progress?) Of Climate Change Adjudication In Canada, Camille Cameron, Riley Weyman, Claire Nicholson

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

Citizens, civil society, and environmental organisations throughout the world are increasingly turning to courts to find solutions to the perils of climate change. In July 2023, the United Nations Environment Programme (“UNEP”) reported that as of November 2022, there were 2,180 climate change litigation cases underway throughout the world, that this number is 2.5 times higher than it was five years ago, and that the number of jurisdictions involved has grown from 24 in 2017, to 39 in 2020, to 65 in 2023. The authors of this report describe climate litigation as “a frontier solution to change the dynamics of …

Environmental Justice Beyond 2°C, Clifford Villa

Faculty Scholarship

In the last four decades, average temperatures have risen significantly across the United States, with Alaska and New Mexico among the fastest warming states. Since 1970, average temperatures in New Mexico have risen 3.5 degrees Fahrenheit (°F)—or nearly 2 degrees Celsius (°C). The international scientific community has urged world leaders to contain global warming above pre-industrial levels to 1.5°C ideally, and to 2°C at worst. Current trajectories, however, suggest we may shoot past 2°C of global warming this century and enter a world of 3-4°C or beyond... The “trade offs” and “letting go” as we confront the looming 4°C world …

Climate Risk, Insurance Retreat, And State Response, Mark Nevitt, Michael Pappas

Publications

Climate change is fundamentally destabilizing the private insurance industry, with many high-profile insurance companies exiting states in the face of catastrophic, climate-induced risk. This rapid “insurance retreat” represents a major market signal in response to climate-exacerbated risks. Private businesses are making actuarial decisions, assessing that some locations are just too vulnerable to insure. At the same time, this insurance retreat also poses a policy challenge for states as they react to the mounting insurance gaps left by exiting private insurers.

This Article analyzes insurance retreat, its attendant policy challenges, and the lessons that can be drawn from state responses. It …

My World's On Fire, How 'Bout Yours? An Investigation Of How Privilege Fosters And Maintains Climate Denial, Morgan A. Chester

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

The present study investigates the phenomenon of climate denial through a new theoretical framework of privilege. The analysis utilizes a feminist orientation that builds on a historical interpretation through the lens of colonialism. Through the dissection of current multidisciplinary understandings of climate denial and new concepts discovered in the review of academic literature and popular media, a compilation of theory, relationship, and connection is made. Systems of power and privilege are examined and connected to the mechanisms and maintenance of climate denial. The resulting analysis illuminates that settler colonialism, supported by connected ideologies of White supremacy, ableism, and patriarchy inform …

The Chicago School’S Coasean Incoherence, Madison Condon

Faculty Scholarship

This comment traces the divergent legal academic interpretations of the Chicago School's Ronald Coase and where their influence lands--revealing the law’s inconsistent conception of just what a corporation is or should be. By following Alyssa Battistoni's investigation of the origin of the "externality," we can see the late 60s and early 1970s as a pivotal era. People were waking up to the collective costs of industrialization and pushing back against corporate power. Against this democratic wave, the writings of the Chicago School worked to separate one human person into her different roles in the economy—consumer, worker, shareholder. They used the …