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Full-Text Articles in Law
The Public Trust Doctrine And The Climate Crisis: Panacea Or Platitude?, Joseph Regalia
The Public Trust Doctrine And The Climate Crisis: Panacea Or Platitude?, Joseph Regalia
Michigan Journal of Environmental & Administrative Law
Over a year of shutting down the global economy during the COVID pandemic achieved about .01 degrees of improvement in global warming. Not even a drop in the bucket. We continue to face a monumental climate crisis. And of the many ways that crisis threatens our environment, winnowing water resources is one of the scariest. One solution that many scholars have turned to is the public trust doctrine. At first blush, this doctrine sounds like a panacea for water management problems: When our water resources are threatened enough that current and future citizen’s access to it is in peril, the …
Assessing The Climate Impacts Of U.S. Trade Agreements, Matthew C. Porterfield, Kevin P. Gallagher, Judith Claire Schachter
Assessing The Climate Impacts Of U.S. Trade Agreements, Matthew C. Porterfield, Kevin P. Gallagher, Judith Claire Schachter
Michigan Journal of Environmental & Administrative Law
Meeting the ambitious goals of the Paris Agreement will require the United States and other major greenhouse gas (GHG) emitters to integrate climate change considerations into all relevant areas of economic policy. The United States, however, has conspicuously failed to do so with regard to international trade negotiations. International trade agreements tend to increase GHG emissions due to the economic effects of trade liberalization, including increases in the scale of economic activity and changes in the composition of the affected economies. Trade agreements can also affect climate change in less quantifiable but potentially more significant ways by restricting the ability …
Energy-Water Nexus, The Clean Power Plan, And Integration Of Water Resource Concerns Into Energy Decision-Making, Sarah Ladin
Energy-Water Nexus, The Clean Power Plan, And Integration Of Water Resource Concerns Into Energy Decision-Making, Sarah Ladin
Michigan Journal of Environmental & Administrative Law
Energy regulation in the United States is now at a crossroads. The EPA has begun the process to officially repeal the Clean Power Plan and currently has no plan to replace it with new rulemaking to regulate carbon emissions from the U.S. energy sector. Even though the Clean Power Plan is more or less at its end, its regulatory structure stands as a model of the way decision-makers in the United States regulate the energy sector and the environment. Since the beginning of the modern environmental legal system, decision-makers have chosen to silo the system. Statutes and agencies focus on …
Wrongful Benefit & Arctic Drilling, Nicolas Cornell, Sarah E. Light
Wrongful Benefit & Arctic Drilling, Nicolas Cornell, Sarah E. Light
Articles
The law contains a diverse range of doctrines — “slayer rules” that prevent murderers from inheriting, restrictions on trade in “conflict diamonds,” the Fourth Amendment’s exclusion of evidence obtained through unconstitutional search, and many more — that seem to instantiate a general principle that it can be wrong to profit from past harms or misconduct. This Article explores the contours of this general normative principle, which we call the wrongful benefit principle. As we illustrate, the wrongful benefit principle places constraints both on whether anyone should be permitted to exploit ethically tainted goods, and who may be permitted to profit …
Too Many Cooks In The Climate Change Kitchen: The Case For An Administrative Remedy For Damages Caused By Increased Greenhouse Gas Concentrations, Benjamin Reese
Michigan Journal of Environmental & Administrative Law
Recent federal and state court decisions have made clear that federal common law claims against emitters of greenhouse gases are not sustainable; however, those same courts seem to have given state common law tort claims the green light, at least if the claims are brought in the state where the polluters are located. This Note contends that such suits are not an adequate remedy for those injured by climate change because they will face nearly insurmountable barriers in state court, and because there are major policy-level drawbacks to relying on state tort law rather than a federal solution. This Note …
Delinking International Environmental Law & Climate Change, Cinnamon Carlarne
Delinking International Environmental Law & Climate Change, Cinnamon Carlarne
Michigan Journal of Environmental & Administrative Law
This Article challenges the existing paradigm in international law that frames global efforts to address climate change as a problem of and for international environmental law. The most recent climate reports tell us that warming is unequivocal and that we are already experiencing the impacts of climate change at the domestic level in the United States. Against this backdrop, much has been written recently in the United States about domestic efforts to address climate change. These efforts are important, but they leave open the question of how the global community can work together to address the greatest collective action problem …
Keynote Remarks At The University Of Michigan Environmental Law And Public Health Conference, Gina Mccarthy
Keynote Remarks At The University Of Michigan Environmental Law And Public Health Conference, Gina Mccarthy
Michigan Journal of Environmental & Administrative Law
The following are the prepared remarks delivered at the University of Michigan Law School’s 2013 Environmental Law and Public Health Conference on September 26, 2013.
Adaptation And The Courtroom: Judging Climate Science, Kirsten Engel, Jonathan Overpeck
Adaptation And The Courtroom: Judging Climate Science, Kirsten Engel, Jonathan Overpeck
Michigan Journal of Environmental & Administrative Law
Climate science is increasingly showing up in courtroom disputes over the duty to adapt to climate change. While judges play a critical role in evaluating scientific evidence, they are not apt to be familiar with the basic methods of climate science nor with the role played by peer review, publication, and training of climate scientists. This Article is an attempt to educate the bench and the bar on the basics of the discipline of climate science, which we contend is a distinct scientific discipline. We propose a series of principles to guide a judge’s evaluation of the reliability and weight …
The Constitutionality Of California's Cap-And-Trade Program And Recommendations For Design Of Future State Programs, Thomas Alcorn
The Constitutionality Of California's Cap-And-Trade Program And Recommendations For Design Of Future State Programs, Thomas Alcorn
Michigan Journal of Environmental & Administrative Law
Global climate change has emerged as one of the greatest challenges of our time. While action has stalled on the national stage, states have started to take action to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. Confronted with the risk of severe impacts that could cost it tens of billions of dollars annually by the end of the century, California has taken the lead and developed the first comprehensive cap-and-trade program in the nation and seeks to achieve significant reductions in the greenhouse gas emissions associated with its economy. The success of California’s program will determine whether other states and the federal …
The Dormant Commerce Clause And California's Low Carbon Fuel Standard, Kathryn Abbott
The Dormant Commerce Clause And California's Low Carbon Fuel Standard, Kathryn Abbott
Michigan Journal of Environmental & Administrative Law
California’s Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS), enacted as part of the State’s pioneering Global Warming Solutions Act (AB 32), purports to regulate the amount of carbon emissions associated with fuels consumed in the state. Part of this scheme involves assigning numeric scores to vehicle fuels reflecting the amount of carbon emissions associated with their production, transportation, and use. The scores are part of a “cap-and-trade” scheme to lower the state’s total amount of carbon emissions associated with fuel use. Out-of-state industry groups brought a challenge in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of California, alleging that the …
Toward A Sustainable Future: An Environmental Agenda For The Second Term Of The Obama Administration, David M. Uhlmann
Toward A Sustainable Future: An Environmental Agenda For The Second Term Of The Obama Administration, David M. Uhlmann
Other Publications
Much was at stake in the Presidential election of 2012, which was marked by heated debate over the trajectory of the economy, the expiration of the Bush tax cuts, and the fat of the President's health care plan. The candidates disagreed about nearly every issue from foreign policy and the war on terror to a woman's right to choose and same-sex marriage. Lost amid the din and never mentioned in the Presidential debates or most of the campaign speeches was another divisive topic: how our environmental laws and policies should address global climate change and chart a sustainable future for …
International Law In The Anthropocene: Responding To The Geoengineering Challenge, Karen N. Scott
International Law In The Anthropocene: Responding To The Geoengineering Challenge, Karen N. Scott
Michigan Journal of International Law
From The Odyssey to The Tempest and beyond, the control and deliberate manipulation of the weather constitutes an enduring and universal theme in myth and literature. In the twenty-first century, it is scientists and engineers rather than authors and artists who dream of weather and climate control, and their story, as described by James Rodger Fleming, "is not, in essence, a heroic saga about new scientific discoveries that can save the planet, as many of the participants claim, but a tragicomedy of overreaching, hubris, and self-delusion." This notwithstanding, the argument that we should deliberately manipulate earth systems and natural processes …
Nepa In The Hot Seat: A Proposal For An Office Of Environmental Analysis, Aliza M. Cohen
Nepa In The Hot Seat: A Proposal For An Office Of Environmental Analysis, Aliza M. Cohen
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
Judicial deference under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) can be problematic. It is a well-established rule of administrative law that courts will grant a high degree of deference to agency decisions. They do this out of respect for agency expertise and policy judgment. This deference is applied to NEPA lawsuits without acknowledging the special pressures that agencies face while assessing the environmental impacts of their own projects. Though there is a strong argument that these pressures undermine the reasons for deferential review, neither the statute nor the courts have provided plaintiffs with adequate means to remedy this problem. Agency …
Combating Global Climate Change: Why A Carbon Tax Is A Better Response To Global Warming Than Cap And Trade, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah, David M. Uhlmann
Combating Global Climate Change: Why A Carbon Tax Is A Better Response To Global Warming Than Cap And Trade, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah, David M. Uhlmann
Articles
Global climate change is the most significant environmental issue facing our nation and the world. There no longer is any question that global warming is occurring. Nor is there any serious debate about whether human activity is the root cause. If we fail to make significant reductions in greenhouse gas emissions over the next ten to twenty years, we face the possibility of catastrophic environmental harm by the end of this century.
America’S Next Move: The United States’ Domestic And International Policies On Global Warming After The Kyoto Protocol, Joshua Van Der Ploeg
America’S Next Move: The United States’ Domestic And International Policies On Global Warming After The Kyoto Protocol, Joshua Van Der Ploeg
Michigan Law Review First Impressions
The international Kyoto Protocol to combat global warming—negotiated in 1997 and ratified by nearly all signatory countries except the United States and Kazakhstan—will expire in 2012, at the end of the upcoming presidential term. Whichever candidate the American people select to lead our nation for the next four years will face two great challenges to confront global climate change: what direction to take the country within the international community as the world decides how to replace Kyoto, and what policies to implement domestically to help curb this impending crisis.
A U.S.-China Partnership To Protect Our Climate, Thomas P. Lyon
A U.S.-China Partnership To Protect Our Climate, Thomas P. Lyon
Michigan Law Review First Impressions
Climate change is an environmental problem of global dimensions, but we lack a system of international law that can impose a coordinated response. Bilateral agreements between key nations may present a solution. A partnership between the United States and China to develop technology for carbon capture and sequestration offers hope for mitigating the climate impacts of China’s rapidly growing number of coal-burning electric power plants.
A Climate Agenda For The New President, Lisa Heinzerling
A Climate Agenda For The New President, Lisa Heinzerling
Michigan Law Review First Impressions
The Bush Administration squandered eight years denying the reality of climate change and delaying action on it. Nevertheless, the president who comes into office in January will face two happy realities. First, whatever the Bush Administration has done (through obstruction or inaction) on climate change can easily be undone due to its legal and scientific flimsiness. And second, statutes now on the books provide plenty of legal authority for swift action on the most important environmental issue of our time.
Useful Global-Change Scenarios: Current Issues And Challenges, Edward A. Parson
Useful Global-Change Scenarios: Current Issues And Challenges, Edward A. Parson
Articles
Scenarios are increasingly used to inform global-change debates, but their connection to decisions has been weak and indirect. This reflects the greater number and variety of potential users and scenario needs, relative to other decision domains where scenario use is more established. Global-change scenario needs include common elements, e.g., model-generated projections of emissions and climate change, needed by many users but in different ways and with different assumptions. For these common elements, the limited ability to engage diverse global-change users in scenario development requires extreme transparency in communicating underlying reasoning and assumptions, including probability judgments. Other scenario needs are specific …
The Big One, Edward A. Parson
The Big One, Edward A. Parson
Reviews
Richard Posner's Catastrophe: Risk and Response (Oxford University Press, 2004) examines four risks whose worst cases could end advanced human civilization or worse: asteroid impacts, a catastrophic chain reaction initiated in high-energy particle accelerators, global climate change, and bioterrorism. He argues that these all warrant more thought and response than they are receiving, and that they can usefully be assessed using a simple analytic framework based on cost-benefit analysis. This essay reviews knowledge of these risks and critically examines Posner's claims for a consistent analytic approach. While the conclusions that each risk merits more thought and effort appear persuasive, these …
Global-Change Scenarios: Their Development And Use, Edward A. Parson, Virginia Burkett, Karen Fisher-Vanden, David Keith, Linda Mearns, Hugh Pitcher, Cynthia Rosenzweig, Mort Webster
Global-Change Scenarios: Their Development And Use, Edward A. Parson, Virginia Burkett, Karen Fisher-Vanden, David Keith, Linda Mearns, Hugh Pitcher, Cynthia Rosenzweig, Mort Webster
Other Publications
This report examines the development and use of scenarios in global climate change applications. It considers scenarios of various types – including but not limited to emissions scenarios – and reviews how they have been developed, what uses they have served, what consistent challenges they have faced, what controversies they have raised, and how their development and use might be made more effective. The report is Synthesis & Assessment Product 2.1b of the US Climate Change Science Program. By synthesizing available literature and critically reviewing past experience, the report seeks to assist those who may be conducting, using, or commissioning …
Reflections On Air Capture: The Political Economy Of Active Intervention In The Global Environment; An Editorial Comment, Edward A. Parson
Reflections On Air Capture: The Political Economy Of Active Intervention In The Global Environment; An Editorial Comment, Edward A. Parson
Articles
When global climate change came onto domestic and international policy agendas in the late 1980s, only two types of response were initially considered: reducing emissions by improving efficiencies or switching to lower or non-carbon energy sources; and adapting to the anticipated changes. Since that time the agenda of potential responses has been progressively expanded, principally by adding various ways to intervene in the global carbon cycle or the climate to break the connection between emissions of greenhouse gases and the resultant climate changes. Three types of these “intervening” responses are now, to varying degrees, present in policy debate: biological sequestration …
Understanding Climatic Impacts, Vulnerabilities, And Adaptation In The United States: Building A Capacity For Assessment, Edward A. Parson, Robert W. Corell, Eric J. Barron, Virginia Burkett, Anthony Janetos, Linda Joyce, Thomas R. Karl, Michael C. Maccracken, Jerry Melillo, M. Granger Morgan, David S. Schimel, Thomas Wilbanks
Understanding Climatic Impacts, Vulnerabilities, And Adaptation In The United States: Building A Capacity For Assessment, Edward A. Parson, Robert W. Corell, Eric J. Barron, Virginia Burkett, Anthony Janetos, Linda Joyce, Thomas R. Karl, Michael C. Maccracken, Jerry Melillo, M. Granger Morgan, David S. Schimel, Thomas Wilbanks
Articles
Based on the experience of the U.S. National Assessment, we propose a program of research and analysis to advance capability for assessment of climate impacts, vulnerabilities, and adaptation options. We identify specific priorities for scientific research on the responses of ecological and socioeconomic systems to climate and other stresses; for improvement in the climatic inputs to impact assessments; and for further development of assessment methods to improve their practical utility to decision-makers. Finally, we propose a new institutional model for assessment, based principally on regional efforts that integrate observations, research, data, applications, and assessment on climate and linked environmental-change issues. …
Preparing For Climatic Change: The Water, Salmon, And Forests Of The Pacific Northwest, Philip W. Mote, Edward A. Parson, Alan F. Hamlet, William S. Keeton, Dennis Lettenmaier, Nathan Mantua, Edward L. Miles, David W. Peterson, David L. Peterson, Richard Slaughter, Amy K. Snover
Preparing For Climatic Change: The Water, Salmon, And Forests Of The Pacific Northwest, Philip W. Mote, Edward A. Parson, Alan F. Hamlet, William S. Keeton, Dennis Lettenmaier, Nathan Mantua, Edward L. Miles, David W. Peterson, David L. Peterson, Richard Slaughter, Amy K. Snover
Articles
The impacts of year-to-year and decade-to-decade climatic variations on some of the Pacific Northwest’s key natural resources can be quantified to estimate sensitivity to regional climatic changes expected as part of anthropogenic global climatic change. Warmer, drier years, often associated with El Niño events and/or the warm phase of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, tend to be associated with below-average snowpack, streamflow, and flood risk, below-average salmon survival, below-average forest growth, and above-average risk of forest fire. During the 20th century, the region experienced a warming of 0.8 ◦C. Using output from eight climate models, we project a further warming of …
Gore Wars, Alex Kozinski
Gore Wars, Alex Kozinski
Michigan Law Review
Unless you've been frozen in carbonite or are hopelessly gullible, it must have occurred to you at some point during the last three decades that environmental activists are exaggerating just a bit when they claim that, unless we dramatically change our way of life, we'll soon see the end of civilization as we know it. I'm not sure when these doomsday predictions got started - probably they go back to Malthus and beyond - but I first became aware of environmental Jeremiadism in college in the early 1970s, when tout-le-monde were reading a little book called The Limits to Growth. …
Prescriptive Treaties In Global Warming: Applying The Factors Leading To The Montreal Protocol, Jasmine Abdel-Khalik
Prescriptive Treaties In Global Warming: Applying The Factors Leading To The Montreal Protocol, Jasmine Abdel-Khalik
Michigan Journal of International Law
In order to combat the ever-increasing problem of global warming, developing nations need technology that will limit emissions while allowing for economic growth. This paper will first examine the problem of global warming. In Part II, the paper will explore the reasons developing nations currently are unable to reduce their emissions. In Part III, the paper will look at the factors leading to the success of the Montreal Protocol and examine the global warming debate in light of these factors.
Racing The Rising Tide: Legal Options For The Marshall Islands, J. Chris Larson
Racing The Rising Tide: Legal Options For The Marshall Islands, J. Chris Larson
Michigan Journal of International Law
This Note first describes the threat posed by accelerated sea-level rise. A review of scientific data shows that global warming causes ocean levels to rise and that RMI may need to be evacuated. The current diplomatic efforts to decrease global warming offer few assurances to RMI. In fact, the countries that have obligated themselves to reduce global warming are actually increasing emissions of gases that cause global warming.
Controlling The Environmental Consequences Of Power Development In The People's Republic Of China, Homer Sun
Controlling The Environmental Consequences Of Power Development In The People's Republic Of China, Homer Sun
Michigan Journal of International Law
This Note proposes a strategy to mitigate the environmental degradation resulting from China's power development. Part I introduces China's power industry - its excessive dependence on coal, its antiquated and inefficient infrastructure, its pollutive effects, and its projected expansion. Part II appraises the ways in which China's environmental laws, macroeconomic controls, and foreign investment restrictions influence the growth of power development and its corresponding effect on the environment. Part III assesses the role that governments, development banks, and international organizations can play in curbing the environmental impact of Chinese power projects. Considering the problems associated with current Chinese and international …
The End Of The World News (Symposium: Twenty-Five Years Of Environmental Regulation), James E. Krier
The End Of The World News (Symposium: Twenty-Five Years Of Environmental Regulation), James E. Krier
Articles
My title, but nothing else, owes to Anthony Burgess.' I like the ambiguity of Burgess's words. They could be a play on what an anchor says when she brings the night's news of the world to a close ("and that's the end of.. ."), or they could be the name of a doomsday periodical, or a headline announcing the bankruptcy of a tabloid, or, at the extreme, a reference to the end of the world. For my purposes, however, they signify the end of an era.
The Role Of Risk Analysis In The 1992 Framework Convention On Climate Change, Martin J. Lalonde
The Role Of Risk Analysis In The 1992 Framework Convention On Climate Change, Martin J. Lalonde
Michigan Journal of International Law
This Note examines the role that risk analysis played in fashioning the Framework Convention on Climate Change and argues that risk analysis should play a significant part in implementing the Convention.
Stratospheric Ozone Depletion: A Challenge For International Environmental Law And Policy, Ved P. Nanda
Stratospheric Ozone Depletion: A Challenge For International Environmental Law And Policy, Ved P. Nanda
Michigan Journal of International Law
The first part of the article addresses the phenomenon of stratospheric ozone depletion, noting significant recent developments, and discussing their ramifications. This is followed by an inquiry into pertinent international and U.S. responses to ozone depletion. Recent developments in international environmental law provide an appropriate context for this inquiry. The adequacy of these responses is assessed in the next section. Recommendations follow in the concluding section.