Law Commons^™

Capturing Individual Harms, Katrina Fischer Kuh

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

The aggregated lifestyles and behaviors of individuals impose significant environmental harms yet remain largely unregulated. A growing literature recognizes the environmental significance of individual behaviors, critiques the failure of environmental law and policy to capture harms traceable to individual behaviors, and suggests and evaluates strategies for capturing individual harms going forward. This Article contributes to the existing literature by approaching the problem of environmentally significant individual harms through the lens of environmental federalism. Using climate change and individual greenhouse gas (“GHG”) emissions as an exemplar, the Article illustrates how local information, local governments, and local implementation can enhance policies designed …