Law Commons^™

Effectiveness Of Government Interventions At Inducing Better Environmental Performance: Does Effectiveness Depend On Facility Or Firm Features?, Robert L. Glicksman

Robert L. Glicksman

Environmental agencies have several options for dealing with alleged noncompliance with environmental regulations. These options include pursuit of administrative or judicial civil penalties and injunctions to prevent future violations. Scholars have begun exploring whether these options induce better performance by regulated entities. This Article addresses a largely neglected question: whether a regulated facility’s characteristics affect the efficacy of the different enforcement options. The Article stems from a study of compliance by the chemical industry with federal Clean Water Act permits. It assesses whether facility characteristics, including effluent limit level and type, permit modifications, facility size, capacity utilization, discharge volatility, and …

Sustainable Federal Land Management: Protecting Ecological Integrity And Preserving Environmental Principal, Robert L. Glicksman

Robert L. Glicksman

This article explores the application of the principles of sustainability to management of lands and resources under the jurisdiction of the U.S. Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management. These two agencies operate a mandate to manage the resources under their control to achieve sustained yield. In this context, sustainability has

operated to date primarily in an aspirational fashion, as a broad objective of public land

management, rather than as a useful management tool or an enforceable constraint on agency management discretion.

The article urges the adoption of amendments to the laws under which the Forest Service and the …

Bridging Data Gaps Through Modeling And Evaluation Of Surrogates: Use Of The Best Available Science To Protect Biological Diversity Under The National Forest Management Act, Robert L. Glicksman

Robert L. Glicksman

The implementation of environmental law and policy typically proceeds in the face of scientific uncertainty. Despite this pervasive uncertainty, Congress has directed environmental and resource management agencies to ground their policy decisions in science. Agencies sometimes cope with the paradox of making science-based decisions in the face of uncertainty by using scientific models or other surrogacy techniques to simulate reality. Such simulation enables agencies to conform to their statutory responsibilities to base decisions on scientific considerations, even though a complete understanding of the relationships between their actions and the resulting environmental effects may be beyond their current capabilities.

This article …

Coal-Fired Power Plants, Greenhouse Gases, And State Statutory Substantial Endangerment Provisions: Climate Change Comes To Kansas, Robert L. Glicksman

Robert L. Glicksman

State legislatures and environmental agencies have taken the lead in combating climate change, in the absence of leadership by the federal government. The most widely publicized efforts have involved the imposition of emission controls and fuel economy standards on motor vehicles by states such as California. But the states have also targeted stationary sources of greenhouse gases. In particular, they have sought to minimize carbon dioxide emissions from coal-fired power plants. States have used different approaches to reducing greenhouse gas emissions from electric utilities, including the adoption of renewable portfolio standards and cap-and-trade emission control programs. Increasingly, states are also …