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Full-Text Articles in Law
Turning The Tide In Coastal And Riverine Energy Infrastructure Adaptation: Can An Emerging Wave Of Litigation Advance Preparation For Climate Change?, Dena P. Adler
Sabin Center for Climate Change Law
A new wave of “failure to adapt” lawsuits has sought to clarify how a changing climate may change what reasonable preparations governments and private actors must take, including increasing the resilience of their infrastructure. These suits span constitutional, tort, and statutory law more broadly, but unprepared owners of energy infrastructure may risk additional violations under environmental law due to unpermitted releases of air and water pollution during extreme weather events for which they are not adequately prepared. This piece will specifically consider recent legal and administrative suits that may indicate shifting legal responsibilities for coastal and riverine energy infrastructure owners …
Prison Preparedness And Legal Obligations To Protect Prisoners During Natural Disasters, William Omorogieva
Prison Preparedness And Legal Obligations To Protect Prisoners During Natural Disasters, William Omorogieva
Sabin Center for Climate Change Law
Since at least 2004, the intensity of hurricanes and the damage they have caused in America has increased significantly. After the turbulent hurricane season of 2017, citizens should recognize the elevated risks to safety that occur when individuals stay put, especially during high-intensity hurricanes (Category 3 and higher). States of emergency and evacuation orders have been declared recently in many states and cities that anticipated extreme hurricane conditions. However, even with increased calls for evacuations, warnings from public officials, and around the clock media coverage, a significant portion of the population has continued to be overlooked during times of natural …
Climate Change Impacts On The Bulk Power System: Assessing Vulnerabilities And Planning For Resilience, Justin Gundlach, Romany M. Webb
Climate Change Impacts On The Bulk Power System: Assessing Vulnerabilities And Planning For Resilience, Justin Gundlach, Romany M. Webb
Sabin Center for Climate Change Law
As the scale, speed, and implications of climate change come into focus, stakeholders in the electricity sector are finding it increasingly difficult to turn a blind eye. However, many have opted to attend to climate impacts in a piecemeal fashion, often merely responding to particular extreme events – or types of extreme events, such as coastal storms or floods – and failing to consider the larger phenomenon. This is true of the bulk power system (BPS) in regions overseen by Independent System Operators and Regional Transmission Organizations (collectively, ISO/RTOs), none of which have comprehensively assessed their systems’ vulnerabilities to climate …
Microgrids And Resilience To Climate-Driven Impacts On Public Health, Justin Gundlach
Microgrids And Resilience To Climate-Driven Impacts On Public Health, Justin Gundlach
Sabin Center for Climate Change Law
“Resilience” has burst into the lexicons of several policy areas in recent years, owing in no small part to climate change’s amplification of extreme events that severely disrupt the operation of natural, social, and engineered systems. Fostering resilience means anticipating severe disruptions and planning, investing, and designing so that such disruptions, which are certain to occur, are made shallower in depth and shorter in duration. Thus a resilient system or community can continue functioning despite disruptive events, return more swiftly to routine function following disruption, and incorporate new information so as to improve operations in extremis and speed future restorations. …
Heat Waves: Legal Adaptation To The Most Lethal Climate Disaster (So Far), Michael B. Gerrard
Heat Waves: Legal Adaptation To The Most Lethal Climate Disaster (So Far), Michael B. Gerrard
Faculty Scholarship
The worst heatwave in modern history occurred in Russia in 2010; its rare combination of extreme temperatures and long duration killed an estimated 55,000 people. Under an RCP 8.5 scenario, comparable heat waves could occur every two years in the eastern United States by the end of the century, and by then in Europe, the legendary heat wave of 2003 “would be classed as an anomalously cold summer relative to the new climate.” These increased temperatures and heat waves are not just occurring randomly. The science is clear that human activities – mostly greenhouse gas emissions and deforestation – are …