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Full-Text Articles in Law
Carbon Pricing For A Just Transition, Jeff Todd
Carbon Pricing For A Just Transition, Jeff Todd
University of Colorado Law Review
The legal tools to avoid the potential disasters of climate change are already available, at least according to economists. Economists overwhelmingly prefer carbon pricing tools like carbon taxes and cap-and-trade programs to combat climate change and guide the energy transition. Carbon pricing is more cost effective at lowering carbon and other greenhouse gases (GHGs) than other legal options such as efficiency standards, renewable portfolio standards, subsidies, and tax credits and deductions. Unlike those other options, carbon pricing targets both the supply of and the demand for GHG-emitting products and services; moreover, it gives firms and consumers flexibility in how best …
The Voluntary Carbon Market: Market Failures And Policy Implications, Vittoria Battocletti, Luca Enriques, Alessandro Romano
The Voluntary Carbon Market: Market Failures And Policy Implications, Vittoria Battocletti, Luca Enriques, Alessandro Romano
University of Colorado Law Review
Many companies have made environmental pledges and launched products that claim to be carbon neutral. In most of these instances, corporations rely on carbon offsets. In this Article, we investigate the functioning of the market on which these offsets are created and exchanged, namely the voluntary carbon market, and look into the question of whether and, if so, how it should be subject to regulation. We start by shedding light on the mechanics of this market and then explain why a well-functioning voluntary carbon market is necessary to fight global warming and can also help developing countries build less carbon-intensive …
Force Majeure And The Law Of The Colorado River: The Confluence Of Climate Change, Contracts, And The Constitution, Mary Slosson
Force Majeure And The Law Of The Colorado River: The Confluence Of Climate Change, Contracts, And The Constitution, Mary Slosson
University of Colorado Law Review
Climate change is causing significant, permanent changes to the natural world. In the Colorado River Basin, experts forecast that rising temperatures will cause the spread of a drier, more arid climate across the region. The effects of this desertification are already being felt: less rainfall, the loss of deciduous forests, wildfires that engulf urban areas, and a projected 20 to 30 percent reduction in flows on the Colorado River by mid-century. The net effect is an existential crisis for the forty million people that reside in the Colorado River’s watershed. Mitigating the effects of climate change requires swift action. However, …
Cercla: It's Time To Prioritize Climate Threats, Lyndsie Dundas
Cercla: It's Time To Prioritize Climate Threats, Lyndsie Dundas
University of Colorado Law Review
Climate change will bring more extreme weather, including increased flooding and wind damage, to all stretches of the United States. These effects of climate change will cause profound consequences for communities living near sites with a legacy of toxic waste. With 1,883 Superfund sites on the National Priorities List and countless other U.S. properties with some degree of contamination, climate change will result in increased risk of exposure for surrounding local populations and environments. Currently, the Hazard Ranking System does not consider effects of climate change when calculating the risk a site poses to the public. Without considering associated climate …
The Colorado River Revisited, Jason Anthony Robison
The Colorado River Revisited, Jason Anthony Robison
University of Colorado Law Review
Fifty years ago, former Stanford Law School Dean Charles Meyers published The Colorado River, 19 STAN. L. REV. 1 (1966), arguably the most famous piece of legal scholarship ever written on this vital water source and the complex body of laws governing its flows-colloquially, the "Law of the River." That piece and a companion, The Colorado River: The Treaty with Mexico, 19 STAN. L. REV. 367 (1967), offered seminal accounts of the legal histories, doctrinal features, and unresolved perplexities of the Law of the River's international and interstate allocation framework. Five decades later, between thirty-five and forty million U.S. residents …
Clean Electrification, Shelley Welton
Clean Electrification, Shelley Welton
University of Colorado Law Review
To combat climate change, many leading states have adopted the aim of creating a "participatory"g rid. In this new model, electricity is priced based on time of consumption and carbon content, and consumers are encouraged to adjust their behavior and adopt new technologies to maintain affordable electricity. Although a more participatory grid is an important component of lowering greenhouse gas emissions, it also raises a new problem of clean energy justice: utilities and consumer advocates claim that such policies unjustly benefit the rich at the expense of the poor, given the type of consumer best able to participate in the …
Looking Inward: Domestic Policy For Climate Change Refugees In The United States And Beyond, Carey Degenaro
Looking Inward: Domestic Policy For Climate Change Refugees In The United States And Beyond, Carey Degenaro
University of Colorado Law Review
No abstract provided.
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
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
University of Colorado Law Review
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 …
Powering The Tap Dry: Regulatory Alternatives For The Energy-Water Nexus, Amy Hardberger
Powering The Tap Dry: Regulatory Alternatives For The Energy-Water Nexus, Amy Hardberger
University of Colorado Law Review
In 2008, while Atlanta residents freely watered their lawns, several nuclear power plants in Georgia almost shut down due to drought-induced water scarcity. This absurd reality stemmed from the misunderstood and almost wholly unregulated relationship between energy and water. Water and energy are indivisibly linked and interwoven into every aspect of our culture and lifestyle. Large quantities of water are required to generate energy, and energy is required at all stages of the water supply process including pumping, treating, and end uses. While much has been written recently on the numeric relationship between these sectors, little has been proposed from …
A Just And Healthy Future For The 100 Percent, Bill Hedden
A Just And Healthy Future For The 100 Percent, Bill Hedden
University of Colorado Law Review
No abstract provided.
Climate Change Under Nepa: Avoiding Cursory Consideration Of Greenhouse Gases, Amy L. Stein
Climate Change Under Nepa: Avoiding Cursory Consideration Of Greenhouse Gases, Amy L. Stein
University of Colorado Law Review
Neither the National Environmental Policy Act ("NEPA') nor its implementing regulations require consideration of climate change in NEPA documentation. Yet an evergrowing 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 …
The Solitary Attempt: International Trade Law And The Insulation Of Domestic Greenhouse Gas Trading Schemes From Foreign Emissions Credit Markets, Elias Leake Quinn
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 …
Climate Change, Regulatory Fragmentation, And Water Triage, Robin Kundis Craig
Climate Change, Regulatory Fragmentation, And Water Triage, Robin Kundis Craig
University of Colorado Law Review
Viewed from a watershed perspective, we are unconsciously sacrificing many marine ecosystems because upstream fresh water is a regulatorily fragmented resource. That is, water is subject to multiple assertions of regulatory authority and to multiple types of use-right claims that those authorities regulate. As freshwater supplies become increasingly unequal to the task of meeting the multiple demands for both consumptive and in situ use, and as consumptive and in situ uses of water come increasingly into irreconcilable conflict, the various regulatory schemes governing water use have also increasingly come into legal conflict. These courtroom battles have revealed many tensions, overlaps, …
Indigenous People And Environmental Justice: The Impact Of Climate Change, Rebecca Tsosie
Indigenous People And Environmental Justice: The Impact Of Climate Change, Rebecca Tsosie
University of Colorado Law Review
The international dialogue on climate change is currently focused on a strategy of adaptation that includes the projected removal of entire communities, if necessary. Not surprisingly, many of the geographical regions that are most vulnerable to the effects of climate change are also the traditional lands of indigenous communities. This article takes the position that the adaptation strategy will prove genocidal for many groups of indigenous people, and instead argues for recognition of an indigenous right to environmental selfdetermination, which would allow indigenous peoples to maintain their cultural and political status upon their traditional lands. In the context of climate …