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Environmental Law

William & Mary Law School

Journal

2021

Climate Change Mitigation

Articles 1 - 2 of 2

Full-Text Articles in Law

Greening The Trust: Enforcing Pennsylvania's Environmental Rights And Duties To Combat Climate Change, Julia E. Sappey Apr 2021

Greening The Trust: Enforcing Pennsylvania's Environmental Rights And Duties To Combat Climate Change, Julia E. Sappey

William & Mary Law Review

Over the last century, humans have warmed the planet by approximately 1.0°C. Pennsylvania’s average temperature has risen 1.8°F in the last hundred years, and climate scientists predict it will warm an additional 5.4°F by 2050. These rising temperatures create feedback loops, leading to warming that will eventually become irreversible. Warmer temperatures have already led to melting ice caps, rising sea levels, dangerous weather patterns, and food shortages. Human-produced greenhouse gases (GHG) are the largest contributing factor to this warming. The scientific community largely agrees that if humans do not reach carbon neutrality by 2050, damage to the climate will be …


Climate Change's Free Rider Problem: Why We Must Relinquish Freedom To Become Free, Natalie M. Roy Jan 2021

Climate Change's Free Rider Problem: Why We Must Relinquish Freedom To Become Free, Natalie M. Roy

William & Mary Environmental Law and Policy Review

Despite the increasing urgency of climate change, countries continue to struggle to cooperate on even modest solutions. Of international accords that are successfully ratified, agreed-upon commitments are mostly hortatory and vague, succeeding only in engendering a fragmented, voluntary compliance scheme. Unsurprisingly, decades of tepid climate action and procrastination have begotten a staggering emissions gap for the world to close by 2030—requiring a collective greenhouse gas reduction of about fifty percent to limit global warming to the 1.5°C benchmark. Yet, global greenhouse emissions have generally risen, not fallen in the last decade, with 2018 marking a record high despite pledges made …