Law Commons^™

The Costs Of Carbon: Examining The Competitiveness And International Trade Dimensions Of The Waxman-Markey House Bill, Svetlana German

Sabin Center for Climate Change Law

As the United States considers unilateral climate change action, uncertainty exists as to the compatibility of the proposed trade related measures to global warming. This paper considers the rationale behind any trade measures designed to address competitiveness and carbon leakage following the introduction of unilateral climate change legislation (Part I). The paper then assesses the international legality of the proposed measures in the Waxman-Markey Bill under World Trade Organisation (WTO) law (Part II) and proposes alternative mechanisms that may yield economically sound solutions while remaining mindful of equitable principles (Part III).

Sustainability And Land Use Planning: Greening State And Local Land Use Plans And Regulations To Address Climate Change Challenges And Preserve Resources For Future Generations, Patricia E. Salkin

Scholarly Works

Although a coordinated national policy on climate change should be developed, initiatives at the local government level through the land use planning and regulatory control processes have tremendous potential to dramatically contribute to the reduction of green house gas emissions, leading to a reduction in the carbon footprint and ultimately to a more sustainable environment. Part I of this article discusses opportunities for using the comprehensive land use planning process to address sustainability and provides examples of how this is being accomplished across the country. Part II mentions the growing number of state and local climate action plans (and cross-references …

Human Rights Implications Of Climate Change, David Hunter

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

No abstract provided.

Green From Above: Climate Change, New Developmental Strategy, And Regulatory Choice In China, Dongsheng Zang

Articles

This essay discusses a developmental strategy formulated in China between 2004 and 2007, with a strong emphasis on energy efficiency in response to growing pressure from global concerns of climate change. It tries to show how a top-down regulatory structure was reinforced in the process.

Addressing The Energy Efficiency Financing Challenge: The Role And Limitations Of A Green Bank, Christopher Angell

Sabin Center for Climate Change Law

This paper will address how a federal program to aggregate and potentially guarantee loans made to finance energy efficiency projects can be leveraged to promote best practices on the state and local level for opening up energy efficiency projects to external financing. There are a number of existing financing tools that have started to solve the problem of providing access to capital for efficiency projects, but the programs are all relatively small and have had limited market penetration. One essential, but not exclusive, solution will be to create a federal entity, based on existing green bank proposals, that has the …

What Local Climate Change Plans Can Teach Us About City Power, Katherine A. Trisolini

Fordham Urban Law Journal

Discussions of city power have long focused on cities’ power relative to higher levels of government and to each other. The diffuse causes of climate change offer an opportunity to revisit the question of city power by focusing more closely on the intended object of influence. Although these two perspectives on power will at times overlap, they are not identical. If we consider greenhouse gas emissions as the target, cities can employ their relatively minor powers to substantial effect and many of them appear to be trying to do so. But consideration of cities’ climate change policies alters the usual …

Foreword: Energy And The Environment: Empowering Consumers, Katrina Fischer Kuh

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

The conference Energy and the Environment: Empowering Consumers brought together legal scholars, attorneys, scientists, philosophers, journalists, sociologists, elected representatives, and agency experts. This symposium issue of the Hofstra Law Review presents a selection of papers from conference participants that, together, illustrate some of the opportunities, challenges, and diverse questions that arise in the effort to deploy energy and environmental law and policy to embrace individual consumers and combat climate change.

Managing The Risks Of Co2 Sequestration, Amy Hardberger

Faculty Articles

Carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) is an emerging technological development which enables coal to be used while avoiding significant greenhouse-gas emissions. The most effective way to combat the predicted impacts of climate change is to limit carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions, particularly from coal-burning power plants. CCS is ready to be deployed now but is expensive. Although CCS presents challenges, environmental concerns can be mitigated through careful project planning and execution. If the current administration successfully passes and funds a climate bill, CCS will achieve the incentive needed for commercialization.

There are several risks associated with CCS. Some of the most …

CoWho? Kentucky's Need To Statutorily Define Property Interests In Geologically Sequestered Carbon Dioxide, E. Chase Dressman

Kentucky Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Ecosystem Resilience To Disruptions Linked To Global Climate Change: An Adaptive Approach To Federal Land Management, Robert L. Glicksman

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

Global climate change presents daunting challenges to the federal government’s ability to manage its lands and resources in ways that ensure that the priceless natural heritage that these land and resources comprise remains available in substantially unimpaired condition to both present and future generations of Americans. One of the challenges results from the fact that the laws governing the activities of federal land management agencies have outlasted the scientific assumptions on which those laws were based. In particular, Congress adopted many of those laws on the assumption that ecological systems tend toward a natural equilibrium. Subsequently, the science of ecology …

Access To Environmentally Sound Technology In The Developing World: A Proposed Alternative To Compulsory Licensing, Neel Maitra

Sabin Center for Climate Change Law

In 2008, a report published by McKinsey & Co. predicted that a successful program of action on climate change would require the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by 76% by the year 2050. In order to achieve this seemingly daunting target, the report recognized that the transfer of environmentally sound technologies (ESTs) from the developed to the developing world was an urgent necessity. The report cited other sources to acknowledge that such technology transfer was unlikely to be achieved even by a combination of market incentives and funding from developed-world governments.

If market-oriented means, supported by governments, do not suffice …

International Executive Agreements On Climate Change, Hannah Chang

Sabin Center for Climate Change Law

The difficulty of ratifying any future climate change agreement through the Article II treaty process calls for an understanding of the scope of the President’s independent power to enter into internationally binding commitments related to climate change. This power is necessarily limited, but as this paper shows, the President’s foreign affairs powers, together with authority derived from existing treaty obligations and federal statutes, provide legal authority for the President to enter executive agreements relating to measurement, reporting, and verification; aviation emissions; cooperative research and development in science and technology; and capacity-building for developing countries.

Towards A Greenhouse Gas Labeling Regime For Food, Travis Annatoyn

Sabin Center for Climate Change Law

This paper proposes that the federal government implement greenhouse gas labeling standards for food and food products sold within the United States. A labeling regime of this sort would shift consumer purchasing from “high emission” to “low emission” foods and encourage consumer awareness that food, like any other commodity, has a GHG “price.”

Feeding Climate Change: Federal Food Procurement And Its Effects On Global Warming, Amanda Hungerford

Sabin Center for Climate Change Law

This paper examines the technical aspects and policy implications of each of four strategies to effectuate environmentally conscious policies in the federal government's food procurement procedures: a litigation strategy, a rulemaking strategy, a NEPA strategy, and a legislative strategy.

Cash For Clunky Appliances, Anna S. Fleder

Sabin Center for Climate Change Law

This paper examines the viability of a “Cash for Appliances” (“CfA”) program that targets home appliances toward the goal of increasing energy efficiency and decreasing greenhouse gas (“GHG”) emissions. Analyzing an existing CfA effort at the federal level, this paper argues that the case for a federal CfA program is strong, but that the current federal effort falls short of fulfilling its potential. The analysis proceeds in four parts. Part I makes the case for a Cash for Appliances program as a policy tool for promoting energy efficiency. Part II examines existing programs that have done just this – utilized …

Environmental Law In 2049: A Look Back, Michael B. Gerrard

Faculty Scholarship

December 22 marks the 40th anniversary of the National Environmental Policy Act, which started the modern era of environmental law, and the 40th anniversary of the Environmental Law Institute, which was founded to monitor the new field and to create a profession around the emerging discipline. To mark this anniversary, we asked a range of luminaries to forecast how environmental law and the profession dedicated to its successful implementation will mature over the next four decades. Will environmental protection still be the product of a social movement, or will it have become incorporated as part of the cost of doing …

Problems Of Equity And Efficiency In The Design Of International Greenhouse Gas Cap-And-Trade Schemes, Jason S. Johnston

All Faculty Scholarship

This article argues that international greenhouse gas (GHG) cap-and-trade schemes suffer from inherent problems of enforceability and verifiability that both cause significant inefficiencies and create inevitable tradeoffs between equity and efficiency. A standard result in the economic analysis of international GHG cap and trade schemes is that an allocation of initial permits that favors poor, developing countries (making such countries net sellers in equilibrium) may be necessary not only to further redistributive goals but also the efficiency of the GHG cap and trade scheme. This coincidence of equity and efficiency is, however, unlikely to be realized under more realistic assumptions …

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.

Cooperative Federalism And Wind: A New Framework For Achieving Sustainability, Patricia E. Salkin, Ashira Ostrow

Scholarly Works

This Article proposes a federal wind siting policy modeled on the cooperative federalism framework of the TCA’s Siting Policy. Part I describes some advantages of wind energy, focusing specifically on the environmental, economic, and social benefits. This Part also discusses several technical obstacles to wind energy development, including the need to supplement wind energy with conventional energy sources and the lack of adequate transmission infrastructure. Part II assesses the current regulatory regime for the siting of wind turbines, reviewing general practices across the United States at both the state and local levels. Although a number of states have been active …

The Solitary Attempt: International Trade Law And The Insulation Of Domestic Greenhouse Gas Trading Schemes From Foreign Emissions Credit Markets, Elias Leake Quinn

University of Colorado Law Review

This Comment examines the influence of international trade agreements on the implementation of a hypothetical, domestically- scaled cap-and-trade scheme to facilitate greenhouse gas emissions reductions in the United States. Several areas of intersection are examined, including the contemplation of the credits as commodities for trade and the construction of measures designed to offset any competitive disadvantage such a system might put on domestic companies. The Comment concludes that a domestically-scaled cap-and-trade scheme, while an important step in mitigating global climate change, is vulnerable to challenges under existing international trade agreements. Such challenges, if successful, may in turn drive the convergence …

Taking Action In New York On Climate Change, Michael B. Gerrard, David Driesen, Veronica Eady Famira, J. Kevin Healy, Katrina Kuh, Edward Lloyd, Eileen Millett, David Paget, Virginia Robbins, Patricia Salkin, James Sevinsky, James Van Nostrand

Faculty Scholarship

The New York State Bar Association (NYSBA) Task Force on Global Warming (the Task Force) has been convened by NYSBA President Bernice Leber to summarize New York’s existing laws and programs regarding climate change and to make specific proposals that the State can implement in a timely and cost-effective fashion to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and to prepare for the impacts of climate change. New York has taken many steps to address climate change; however, there is much more that can be done. The Task Force has not attempted to comprehensively suggest every possible action, but rather has selected …

Greenhouse Gases: Emerging Standards For Impact Review, Michael B. Gerrard

Faculty Scholarship

Numerous federal and state judicial decisions have established that environmental impact statements (EISs) under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and its state equivalents should examine the impact of proposed projects on emissions of greenhouse gases (GHG), the principal anthropogenic cause of climate change. Administrative agencies and court settlements are now establishing the guidelines for the conduct of these examinations.

The Political Economy Of Energy And Its Implications For Climate Change Legislation, Jim Rossi

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Public choice themes have arisen throughout the history of U.S. energy regulation and continue to be relevant today, particularly with widespread discussion of deregulation and increased attention to climate change. This Article surveys how public choice themes are relevant to understanding a host of issues of importance to the electric power industry today, including the structure of the industry, the significance of wholesale markets, and the division of regulatory power between state and federal authorities. The Article highlights how an understanding of how public choice has contributed to these features of the electric power industry will prove important to the …

Environmental Law: The Policy Implications Of The Reaction To Climate Change, Jeffrey Sutton, Jonathan Adler, John Dernbach, Steven Hayward, Jeremy Rabkin

John C. Dernbach

No abstract provided.

Climate Change Litigation: Opening The Door To The International Court Of Justice, Andrew L. Strauss

Andrew L. Strauss

This chapter examines the potential for the International Court of Justice to serve as a forum for climate change litigation. It begins by assessing the potential legal and political implications of an International Court of Justice decision on climate change. It then proceeds to evaluate various jurisdictional basis upon which the Court could agree to hear cases implicating climate change. Finally, the chapter provides an overview of the law the law applicable to climate change litigation before the Court.

Climate Change And U.S. Interests, Andrew T. Guzman, Jody Freeman

Andrew T Guzman

The public policy debate on the appropriate American response to climate change is now in full swing. There are no longer significant voices disputing that climate change is real or that it is primarily the result of human activity. The issue today is what the United States should do about climate change given the risks the country faces and the likely economic impacts. The question is whether putting a price on carbon domestically is worth the cost.

In this Article we make the case that the United States should act aggressively to mitigate the effects of climate change. In doing …

The Emerging Constitutional Challenge Of Climate Change: India In Perspective, Deepa Badrinarayana

Deepa Badrinarayana

India’s rapidly growing economy naturally demands increasing energy needs from the industrial scale down to the personal. Mindful of potential negative impacts of economic development, India is making efforts to encourage growth while preserving and protecting the environment and human rights. India’s Integrated Energy Policy sets out the roadmap for how the country plans to achieve the balance among development, environmental protection, citizens’ rights, energy security, and a host of other priorities and concerns. Though ambitious and broad in scope, the Policy may prove inadequate in mitigating environmental impacts of development, and thus inadequate in balancing India’s needs, particularly in …