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Articles 1 - 30 of 40
Full-Text Articles in Law
Global Imbalances In Climate Protection, Leadership Ambitions And Eu Climate Change Law, Sanja Bogojevic
Global Imbalances In Climate Protection, Leadership Ambitions And Eu Climate Change Law, Sanja Bogojevic
Sanja Bogojević
No abstract provided.
Wetlands Regulation In An Era Of Climate Change: Can Section 404 Meet The Challenge?, Alyson Flournoy, Allison Fischman
Wetlands Regulation In An Era Of Climate Change: Can Section 404 Meet The Challenge?, Alyson Flournoy, Allison Fischman
Alyson Flournoy
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 …
A Role For Strategic Litigation, Matthew Scott
A Role For Strategic Litigation, Matthew Scott
Matthew Scott
Strategic litigation to protect internationally displaced persons at risk of disaster-related harm in their home countries can usefully support higher-level protection initiatives.
The Public Trust: The Law's Dna, Gerald Torres, Nathan Bellinger
The Public Trust: The Law's Dna, Gerald Torres, Nathan Bellinger
Gerald Torres
No abstract provided.
A Response To The Ipcc Fifth Assessment, Sarah Adams-Schoen, Deepa Badrinarayana, Cinnamon Carlarne, Robin Craig, John Dernbach, Keith Hirokawa, Alexandra Klass, Katrina Kuh, Stephen Miller, Jessica Owley, Shannon Roesler, Jonathon Rosenbloom, Inara Scott, David Takacs
A Response To The Ipcc Fifth Assessment, Sarah Adams-Schoen, Deepa Badrinarayana, Cinnamon Carlarne, Robin Craig, John Dernbach, Keith Hirokawa, Alexandra Klass, Katrina Kuh, Stephen Miller, Jessica Owley, Shannon Roesler, Jonathon Rosenbloom, Inara Scott, David Takacs
John C. Dernbach
This collection of essays is the initial product of the second meeting of the Environmental Law Collaborative, a group of environmental law scholars that meet to discuss important and timely environmental issues. Here, the group provides an array of perspectives arising from the Fifth Assessment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Each scholar chose one passage from one of the IPCC’s three Summaries for Policymakers as a jumping-off point for exploring climate change issues and responding directly to the reports. The result is a variety of viewpoints on the future of how law relates to climate change, a result …
Controlling Power Plants: The Co-Pollutant Implications Of Epa's Clean Air Act § 111(D) Options For Greenhouse Gases, Alice Kaswan
Controlling Power Plants: The Co-Pollutant Implications Of Epa's Clean Air Act § 111(D) Options For Greenhouse Gases, Alice Kaswan
Alice Kaswan
Existing power plants are the nation’s largest single source of carbon emissions. In the absence of comprehensive federal climate change, EPA is forging ahead with power plant controls through § 111(d) of the Clean Air Act. This article focuses on one critical consideration: the ancillary impacts of carbon controls on associated co-pollutants, like sulfur oxides, particulates, nitrogen oxides, and mercury. The article focuses on an array of regulatory options, including both “inside-the-fence” reductions at power plants and “outside-the-fence” measures that reduce power sector emissions, like renewable energy and consumer energy efficiency. The article then evaluates the co-pollutant consequences of several …
Assessing The Legal Toolbox For Sea Level Rise Adaptation In Delaware: Options And Challenges For Regulators, Policymakers, Property Owners, And The Public, Kenneth Kristl
Kenneth T Kristl
Sea level rise is a real and growing issue in the State of Delaware. Over the next 90 years, a significant percentage—between 8 and 11 percent—of Delaware is at risk of being inundated. The threat of inundation has the potential to trigger reactions from some property owners that will seek to protect their interests. Thousands of these resulting individual, ad hoc decisions and non-decisions will make it difficult to carry out a unified strategy to adapt to the massive economic and geographic impacts sea level rise will likely cause in the State. It therefore behooves regulators, policy makers, property owners, …
Climate Change And Environmental Justice: Lessons From The California Lawsuits, Alice Kaswan
Climate Change And Environmental Justice: Lessons From The California Lawsuits, Alice Kaswan
Alice Kaswan
Beginning in June 2009, environmental justice groups brought several controversial lawsuits against California’s climate change program, sparking concern in the mainstream environmental community that the actions would frustrate the state’s climate progress and discourage other states from taking action. This essay, prepared for the University of San Diego’s symposium on “California in the Spotlight: Successes and Challenges in Climate Change Law,” does not pass judgment on the decision to sue. Instead, it uses the lawsuits as a jumping off point for understanding the environmental justice critique of California’s cap-and-trade program, a key feature of the state’s implementation of its climate …
Rising Sea Levels: A Tidal Wave Of Legal Issues, Kenneth Kristl
Rising Sea Levels: A Tidal Wave Of Legal Issues, Kenneth Kristl
Kenneth T Kristl
No abstract provided.
Evolution Of U.S. Climate Policy, John Dernbach, Robert Altenburg
Evolution Of U.S. Climate Policy, John Dernbach, Robert Altenburg
John C. Dernbach
No abstract provided.
State Initiatives, David Hodas
State Initiatives, David Hodas
David R. Hodas
Every state in the United States has adopted laws or policies to address climate change, either explicitly or indirectly through energy regulation, transportation-related initiatives, or energy building codes. Innovative state laws and policies have proven remarkably effective in reducing GHG emissions both quantitatively and as a percentage of state GDP. Broadly speaking, states understand that climate change is a global phenomenon that must be addressed nationally and internationally. Inevitably much GHG emission reduction and adaptation to the adverse consequences of climate change falls on states to implement because of their local powers to regulate utilities, land use, building codes, transportation, …
Disaster Law And Policy, Daniel Farber, Jim Chen, Robert Verchick, Lisa Grow Sun
Disaster Law And Policy, Daniel Farber, Jim Chen, Robert Verchick, Lisa Grow Sun
Daniel A Farber
Dangers Of Trying To Set Earth's Thermostat, Andrew Strauss, William Burns
Dangers Of Trying To Set Earth's Thermostat, Andrew Strauss, William Burns
Andrew L. Strauss
No abstract provided.
Law, The Laws Of Nature And Ecosystem Energy Services: A Case Of Wilful Blindness, David R. Hodas
Law, The Laws Of Nature And Ecosystem Energy Services: A Case Of Wilful Blindness, David R. Hodas
David R. Hodas
Ecosystems services include the collection, concentration, and storage of solar energy as fossil fuels (e.g., coal, petroleum, and natural gas). These concentrated forms of energy were produced by ancient ecosystem services. However, our legal and economic systems fail to recognise the value of the ecosystem service subsidies embedded in fossil fuels. This ecosystem services price subsidy causes overuse and waste of fossil fuels in the free market: fossil fuels are consumed more quickly than they can be replaced by ecosystem services and in far larger quantities than they would be if the price of fossil fuels included the cost of …
Seven Principles For Equitable Adaptation, Alice Kaswan
Seven Principles For Equitable Adaptation, Alice Kaswan
Alice Kaswan
Given the inevitability of serious climate impacts, climate change adaptation is becoming an urgent priority. Policy makers at the local, regional, state, and federal level are struggling to determine how to parlay existing authorities and develop new measures to avoid future calamity.
Successful adaptation will require not only attention to physical infrastructure, but to the underlying socioeconomic conditions that strongly determine the severity of climate impacts. Given the importance of underlying socioeconomic factors, this essay argues that equity should be a central feature of emerging domestic climate adaptation initiatives. It suggests seven principles for achieving equitable adaptation, principles designed to …
Domestic Climate Change Adaptation And Equity, Alice Kaswan
Domestic Climate Change Adaptation And Equity, Alice Kaswan
Alice Kaswan
It is now commonly accepted that climate change will lead to sea-level rise, more extreme storms, heat waves, wildfires, changing weather patterns, and the spread of disease. Reducing greenhouse gas emissions is necessary, but not sufficient. Global, national, and subnational adaptation measures to reduce climate harm are essential.
This article argues that equity should be a central feature of emerging domestic climate adaptation initiatives. It details how more frequent and intense “natural” disasters, long-term impacts on habitability, and public health threats will have unequal impacts within the United States. The article suggests seven principles for achieving equitable adaptation, principles designed …
Keeping It Legal: Transboundary Management Challenges Facing Brazil And The Guarani, David Cassuto
Keeping It Legal: Transboundary Management Challenges Facing Brazil And The Guarani, David Cassuto
David N Cassuto
This paper examines the legal and ecological problems facing the Guarani Aquifer System. Because the majority of the Guarani Aquifer System underlies Brazil, the Brazilian legal regime forms the paper’s principal focus. The importance of the region makes the need for accurate information crucial. Yet relying on such information to manage a complex resource presents risks. Too often, the role of uncertainty in regulating is underplayed. Increasing knowledge over the resource demands categorizing “hard” and “soft” uncertainties, especially those presented by climate change. In addition, regulators must acknowledge the unitary nature of the aquifer while remaining sensitive to differing national …
Unnatural Resource Law: Situating Desalination In Coastal Resource And Water Law Doctrines, Michael Pappas
Unnatural Resource Law: Situating Desalination In Coastal Resource And Water Law Doctrines, Michael Pappas
Michael Pappas
This Article offers the first legal analysis of desalination, the process of converting saltwater into freshwater. Desalination represents a key climate change adaptation measure because the United States has exploited nearly all of its freshwater resources, freshwater demands continue to grow, and climate change threatens to diminish significantly existing freshwater supplies. However, scholarship has yet to address the legal ambiguities that desalination raises in the context of property, water law, and coastal resource doctrines.
This Article addresses these ambiguities and suggests the legal adaptations necessary to accommodate desalination as a climate change adaptation. Under current legal doctrines, the chain of …
Cooperative Federalism And Wind: A New Framework For Achieving Sustainability, Patricia Salkin, Ashira Ostrow
Cooperative Federalism And Wind: A New Framework For Achieving Sustainability, Patricia Salkin, Ashira Ostrow
Patricia E. Salkin
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 …
Climate Change, The Clean Air Act, And Industrial Pollution, Alice Kaswan
Climate Change, The Clean Air Act, And Industrial Pollution, Alice Kaswan
Alice Kaswan
EPA has braved controversy by applying the Clean Air Act (CAA) to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from stationary sources, including utilities and industry. Because GHG controls inevitably affect combustion, they will impact traditional pollutants (termed “co-pollutants”). The Article first argues, as a threshold matter, that co-pollutant consequences are relevant to climate policy choices, and that considering those consequences will lead to improved environmental, administrative, and economic outcomes. It then reviews the CAA’s stationary source provisions and EPA’s implementation of them to date, discussing both the CAA’s potential and its limitations.
Moving beyond the CAA on its own terms, the Article …
Aep V. Connecticut And The Future Of The Political Question Doctrine, James R. May
Aep V. Connecticut And The Future Of The Political Question Doctrine, James R. May
James R. May
No abstract provided.
Can The Battle Against Climate Change Become An Effective Social Movement?, John Dernbach
Can The Battle Against Climate Change Become An Effective Social Movement?, John Dernbach
John C. Dernbach
No abstract provided.
Federal Energy Efficiency And Conservation Laws, John Dernbach, Marianne Tyrrell
Federal Energy Efficiency And Conservation Laws, John Dernbach, Marianne Tyrrell
John C. Dernbach
This paper provides an overview of U.S. law and policy concerning energy efficiency and conservation. The United States appears torn between two narratives - one expressing the abundant demonstrated opportunities provided by energy savings and the other based on a fear of deprivation from using less energy. Rather than choosing between the two, U.S. law and policy splits the difference - embracing efficiency and conservation more or less halfheartedly. Energy efficiency and conservation policy thus has a Groundhog Day aspect, in which the same or similar arguments are made year after year, decade after decade, and often (it appears) to …
The Essential And Growing Role Of Legal Education In Achieving Sustainability, John Dernbach
The Essential And Growing Role Of Legal Education In Achieving Sustainability, John Dernbach
John C. Dernbach
This article suggests that law schools need to play a leading role in the national and global effort to achieve sustainability, including the effort to address climate change. The article first describes the various drivers for sustainability in law schools. Clients are increasingly demanding that their lawyers 'walk the talk,' as many businesses and corporations already are. The universities that provide an institutional home for most law schools are also adopting sustainability policies and practices that influence their law schools. Within the legal profession, the American Bar Association, as well as many state and local bar associations, have adopted a …
The "Cash For Clunkers" Program: A Sustainability Evaluation, Marianne Tyrrell, John Dernbach
The "Cash For Clunkers" Program: A Sustainability Evaluation, Marianne Tyrrell, John Dernbach
John C. Dernbach
This article describes and evaluates the effectiveness of the Consumer Assistance to Recycle and Save Act of 2009, also known as the “Cash for Clunkers” legislation. Under this law, Congress authorized persons trading in older and less fuel-efficient motor vehicles for newer and more fuel-efficient vehicles to receive a voucher worth up to $4,500 toward the purchase of the new vehicle. The article reviews various studies assessing the effectiveness of this legislation based on economic, social, and environmental criteria. Because these criteria are consistent with the goals of sustainable development, the legislation provides important lessons for future efforts to achieve …
Reconciling Justice And Efficiency: Integrating Environmental Justice Into Domestic Cap-And-Trade Programs For Controlling Greenhouse Gases, Alice Kaswan
Alice Kaswan
In the last thirty years, two opposing trends have emerged in environmental policy: environmental justice and market-based mechanisms. They present fundamental tensions. The environmental justice movement’s distributional goals conflict with market programs’ focus on cost-effectively achieving aggregate goals, without regard to distribution. And the environmental justice movement’s participatory goals conflict with market programs’ focus on industry autonomy and privatized decisionmaking. The tension between environmental justice and markets is arising in the context of cap-and-trade programs for greenhouse gases (GHGs). While GHGs do not impose localized harms, GHG trading policies nonetheless raise distributional issues because GHG gas emissions are inevitably accompanied …
Making The States Full Partners In A National Climate Change Effort: A Necessary Element For Sustainable Economic Development, John Dernbach, Robert Mckinstry, Thomas Peterson
Making The States Full Partners In A National Climate Change Effort: A Necessary Element For Sustainable Economic Development, John Dernbach, Robert Mckinstry, Thomas Peterson
John C. Dernbach
This article explains why states and localities need to be full partners in a national climate change effort based on federal legislation or the existing Clean Air Act. A large share of reductions with the lowest cost and the greatest co-benefits (e.g., job creation, technology development, reduction of other pollutants) are in areas that a federal cap-and-trade program or other purely federal measures will not easily reach. These are also areas where the states have traditionally exercised their powers—including land use, building construction, transportation, and recycling. The economic recovery and expansion will require direct state and local management of climate …
Decentralizing Cap-And-Trade? State Controls Within A Federal Greenhouse Gas Cap-And-Trade Program, Alice Kaswan
Decentralizing Cap-And-Trade? State Controls Within A Federal Greenhouse Gas Cap-And-Trade Program, Alice Kaswan
Alice Kaswan
Cap-and-trade programs for greenhouse gases (GHGs) present central political questions with significant economic and environmental ramifications. This paper addresses a critical structural issue: To what extent should states retain the capacity to develop stricter parameters within a federal cap-and-trade program? This Article argues that, within the confines of a federal trading program, states should retain substantial autonomy to establish their own direct regulatory requirements, impose their own offset policies, and adopt differing trading parameters to maximize a GHG trading program’s co-pollutant and other benefits. State autonomy is justified by benefits to the nation as a whole, since states can provide …
Climate Change Law: Mitigation And Adaptation, Richard Hildreth, David Hodas, Nicholas Robinson, James Speth
Climate Change Law: Mitigation And Adaptation, Richard Hildreth, David Hodas, Nicholas Robinson, James Speth
David R. Hodas
No abstract provided.
Greening The Grid And Climate Justice, Alice Kaswan
Greening The Grid And Climate Justice, Alice Kaswan
Alice Kaswan
This short symposium essay argues that the collateral environmental and economic justice benefits of greening the grid provide support for transformative climate policies that speed the development of fossil fuel alternatives. More broadly, policymakers should integrate climate justice considerations into the design of any new energy infrastructure in order to maximize the benefits and minimize the risks of the profound transition ahead. While efforts to integrate climate justice could complicate climate and energy legislation, they would, on balance, further rather than hinder the political prospects for greening the grid. The essay concludes by encouraging an inclusive and participatory process for …