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Full-Text Articles in Law
The State Response To Climate Change: 50 State Survey, Laura Jensen, Kelly Nishikawa, Benjamin Lowenthal
The State Response To Climate Change: 50 State Survey, Laura Jensen, Kelly Nishikawa, Benjamin Lowenthal
Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications
This survey accompanies Global Climate Change and U.S. Law, Second Edition (Michael B. Gerrard and Jody Freeman, eds, 2014). It compiles state legislation, rules and executive orders that specifically address climate change as of the end of April 2014. It also includes a wide variety of state activities that may have an impact on greenhouse gases including legislation related to energy efficiency and renewable energy. The focus of this material is to provide readers with an understanding of the range of state activity that may contribute to greenhouse gas reduction and climate change. Some types of energy efficiency, alternative fuels …
Land Use And Climate Change: Lawyers Negotiating Above Regulation, John R. Nolon
Land Use And Climate Change: Lawyers Negotiating Above Regulation, John R. Nolon
Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications
Sea level rise requires a new paradigm for controlling the development of coastal lands that are in harm’s way, calling for adjustments in the law, legal practice, and legal education. This article discusses the historical tendency of the law to adjust to changes in society and the recent emergence of new legal institutions and strategies for mitigating and adapting to climate change, particularly sea level rise. It illustrates how the lack of certainty about the extent and pace of sea level rise collides with the total takings doctrine of the Lucas case to frustrate the application of traditional land use …
Capturing Individual Harms, Katrina Fischer Kuh
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 …
Public Trust Limits On Greenhouse Gas Trading Schemes: A Sustainable Middle Ground?, Karl S. Coplan
Public Trust Limits On Greenhouse Gas Trading Schemes: A Sustainable Middle Ground?, Karl S. Coplan
Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications
There is a some consensus among economists, environmentalists, and politicians that some form of “cap and trade’ program is the appropriate regulatory mechanism to achieve the greenhouse gas emissions reductions necessary to avoid disastrous global climate disruptions. “Cap and trade” programs necessarily incorporate tradable emissions rights – essentially tradable rights to pollute. As such, they run into principled objection by some environmentalists who oppose the notion of creating economic rights in the global commons – essentially the “right to pollute.” This principled objection derives doctrinal support from the public trust doctrine – the ancient notion rooted in common law and …
Using Local Knowledge To Shrink The Individual Carbon Footprint, Katrina Fischer Kuh
Using Local Knowledge To Shrink The Individual Carbon Footprint, Katrina Fischer Kuh
Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications
Entire texts have been devoted to exploring the meaning of the term “lifestyle” and sociological understandings of lifestyle are complex and nuanced.For present purposes, however, a more simple articulation of the term will suffice. Lifestyle can mean “mode of living,” including “patterns of action” and “patterns of ways of living.” Without rendering judgment, one observation that can fairly be made about the current lifestyles and associated behaviors of Americans is that they indirectly and directly lead to the emission of a high volume of greenhouse gases (“GHGs”).7 Although an American diplomat is said to have remarked in preparing for …
Foreword: Energy And The Environment: Empowering Consumers, Katrina Fischer Kuh
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.