Law Commons^™

On Fires, Floods, And Federalism, Andrew Hammond

UF Law Faculty Publications

In the United States, law condemns poor people to their fates in states. Where Americans live continues to dictate whether they can access cash, food, and medical assistance. What’s more, immigrants, territorial residents, and tribal members encounter deteriorated corners of the American welfare state. Nonetheless, despite repeated retrenchment efforts, this patchwork of programs has proven remarkably resilient. Yet, the ability of the United States to meet its people’s most basic needs now faces an unprecedented challenge: climate change. As extreme weather events like wildfires and hurricanes become more frequent and more intense, these climate-fueled disasters will displace and impoverish more …

Zoning Reformed, Michael Allan Wolf

UF Law Faculty Publications

It has been roughly a century since early advocates of zoning took notice of how crowded and congested housing conditions contributed to the spread of disease (including the then-recent H1N1 pandemic). The U.S. Supreme Court had just rejected on property rights grounds a city ordinance that expressly segregated neighborhoods by race. One hundred years later, the exposure of the weaknesses embedded in our system of public land use regulation during the crises of 2020 presents a unique and timely opportunity for serious consideration of major and minor adjustments to state statutes, local ordinances, and judicial decisions. This Article calls for …

The Government's Role In Climate Change Insurance, Peter Molk

UF Law Faculty Publications

There are no robust insurance markets for climate change insurance. While these markets would provide valuable loss-mitigation incentives, at the same time giving financial certainty to individuals and businesses that face staggering future liabilities, existing efforts have produced a fragmented set of private and public products that provide only piecemeal coverage. This symposium contribution examines the government’s role in providing unified markets for insuring climate change risk. Although innovations in reinsurance markets suggest that private insurers could cover discrete risks associated with climate change, such as flood or wind loss, climate change’s broader systemic risks present problems of scale and …

Whole-System Agricultural Certification: Using Lessons Learned From Leed To Build A Resilient Agricultural System To Adapt To Climate Change, Mary Jane Angelo, Joanna Reilly-Brown

UF Law Faculty Publications

This Article proposes a novel approach to addressing global climate change's impacts on agricultural production and food security. The climate change crisis is the most significant environmental issue facing our planet. The changes predicted to occur as the earth's climate warms include significant impacts to agriculture. At the same time that the planet is undergoing dramatic climatic changes, the global population is increasing, and economic development in many parts of the world is exerting increased demand for a greater and more diverse supply of food.

The relationship between climate change and agriculture is a close and complex one, as the …

Climate Change And Water Transfers, Jesse Reiblich, Christine A. Klein

UF Law Faculty Publications

Climate change adaptation is all about water. Although some governments have begun to plan for severe water disruptions, many have not. The consequences of inaction, however, may be dire. As a report of the U.N. Environment Programme warns, “countries that adopt a ‘wait and see’ approach potentially risk the lives of their people, their ecosystems and their economies.” In the United States, according to one study, nearly 60% of the states are unprepared to deal with the impending crisis. Responding to this void, we offer what we believe is the first comprehensive, fifty-state survey of water allocation law and its …

Wetlands Regulation In An Era Of Climate Change: Can Section 404 Meet The Challenge?, Alyson C. Flournoy, Allison Fischman

UF Law Faculty Publications

This Article raises the question of how we should assess the potential threat to wetlands posed by the impacts of a changing climate and considers the role that section 404 of the Clean Water Act can play both in assessing and responding to that threat. Our inquiry is two-fold. First, should we be concerned about climate impacts on wetlands? And if so, how can section 404 help us to assess and respond to this threat?

Part I surveys the scientific literature on the projected impacts of climate change of particular relevance to wetlands and the impacts anticipated for particular types …

Strategies For Making Sea-Level Rise Adaptation Tools 'Takings-Proof', Michael Allan Wolf

UF Law Faculty Publications

While the costs of some Sea-Level Rise (SLR) adaptation tools are undeniably daunting, the American legal system poses an additional, potentially budget-busting impediment — the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution. Officials at all governmental strata and from all three branches should keep the demands made by the Takings Clause, as interpreted by the judiciary, in mind as they choose tools from the diverse SLR-adaptation toolbox, as they justify their choices to the electorate and other constituencies, as they put those tools to use, and as they defend that use from litigants claiming abuse. This …

Legal Theory And The Anthropocene Challenge: The Implications Of Law, Science, And Policy For Weapons Of Mass Destruction And Climate Change: The Expanding The Constraining Boundaries Of Legal Space And Time And The Challenge Of The Anthropocene, Winston P. Nagan, Judit K. Otvos

UF Law Faculty Publications

The idea of legal theory as a self-conscious theory for inquiry about law has opened up the framework of observation and participation. It has heightened social responsibility in ways that have been creative and receptive to analogies and metaphors from the developments in modern science. This paper explores some of these dominant borrowed metaphors. It further emphasizes the importance of the wide range of concerns in law technically, as well as the law’s capacity to manage and manipulate space and time implicating such issues as weapons of mass destruction, rights of indigenous people, deforestation, and climate change. By giving the …

Climate Change Under Nepa: Avoiding Cursory Consideration Of Greenhouse Gases, Amy L. Stein

UF Law Faculty Publications

Neither the National Environmental Policy Act (“NEPA”) nor its implementing regulations require consideration of climate change in NEPA documentation. Yet an ever-growing body of NEPA case law related to climate change is making it increasingly difficult for a federal agency to avoid discussing the impacts of those emissions under NEPA in its Environmental Impact Statements (“EISs”). Although consideration of climate change in NEPA documents sounds right in theory, within the current legal framework, the NEPA documents provide only lip service to the goals of NEPA without any meaningful consideration of climate change. An empirical evaluation of two years of selected …