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Corporate Climate Targets: Between Science And Climate Washing, Nadav Orian Peer Jan 2024

Corporate Climate Targets: Between Science And Climate Washing, Nadav Orian Peer

Publications

The use of corporate climate targets has exploded in recent years. Over three thousand corporations, including the largest and most profitable in the world, have adopted corporate climate targets as commitments to align their actions with climate science and the Paris Agreement. However, the broad adoption of these targets raises important questions: are these commitments truly aligned with science in the way they are advertised, or do they raise “climate washing” concerns, i.e., do they exaggerate the benefits and significance of the climate targets? This Article investigates the role that science actually plays within targets, and explores potential theories of …


Procedural Environmental Justice, Jonathan Skinner-Thompson Jan 2022

Procedural Environmental Justice, Jonathan Skinner-Thompson

Publications

Achieving environmental justice—that is, the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of race, color, national origin, or income, with respect to the development, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies—requires providing impacted communities not just the formal right, but the substantive ability, to participate as equal partners at every level of environmental decision-making. While established administrative policy purports to provide all people with so-called “meaningful involvement” in the regulatory process, the public participation process often excludes marginalized community members from exerting meaningful influence on decision-making. Especially in the environmental arena, regulatory decisions are often buried …


Administrative Law's Extraordinary Cases, Jonathan Skinner-Thompson Jan 2020

Administrative Law's Extraordinary Cases, Jonathan Skinner-Thompson

Publications

The Supreme Court's major questions doctrine is grounded in the Chevron framework. Reconstituting it as a "major rules" exception to Chevron or as a non-delegation principle are misguided and create greater uncertainty.


The Use Of Courts To Protect The Environmental Commons, Lakshman Guruswamy Jan 2019

The Use Of Courts To Protect The Environmental Commons, Lakshman Guruswamy

Publications

No abstract provided.


Sustainable Development: Energy, Justice, And Women, Lakshman Guruswamy Jan 2019

Sustainable Development: Energy, Justice, And Women, Lakshman Guruswamy

Publications

This article will first offer a functional synopsis relevant to its remit, of the concept of sustainable development (SD) embodied in international law and policy that reflects a tension between economic and social claims as contrasted with environmental protection. While the dominant place acquired by the economic and social dimensions of SD will be recognized, it will argue consistent with the predicate of justice discussed in the article, that the protection of the human environment encompasses the plight of the energy poor and their women and children. Second, the article will delineate the contours of one of the great developmental …


Environmental Law, Big Data, And The Torrent Of Singularities, William Boyd Jan 2016

Environmental Law, Big Data, And The Torrent Of Singularities, William Boyd

Publications

How will big data impact environmental law in the near future? This Essay imagines one possible future for environmental law in 2030 that focuses on the implications of big data for the protection of public health from risks associated with pollution and industrial chemicals. It assumes the perspective of an historian looking back from the end of the twenty-first century at the evolution of environmental law during the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. The premise of the Essay is that big data will drive a major shift in the underlying knowledge practices of environmental law (along with other areas …


Interdisciplinary Research And Environmental Law, Caroline L. Noblet, Dave Owen Jan 2014

Interdisciplinary Research And Environmental Law, Caroline L. Noblet, Dave Owen

Publications

This Article considers the involvement of environmental law researchers in interdisciplinary research. Using a survey and a series of unstructured interviews, we explore environmental law professors’ level of interest in such research; the extent of their engagement in it; and the inducements and barriers they perceive to such research. We conclude that levels of engagement in such research are probably lower than they ought to be, and we therefore recommend steps that individuals and institutions could take to facilitate more and better interdisciplinary work. More generally, we conclude that some common critiques of interdisciplinary legal research rest on assumptions that …


The California Offset Game: Who Wins And Who Loses?, Alan Ramo Jan 2014

The California Offset Game: Who Wins And Who Loses?, Alan Ramo

Publications

California is implementing the most comprehensive global warming regulatory program in the United States. A key part of this program is its cap-and-trade system. Integral to the cap-and-trade requirements are provisions for offsets, whereby companies, to meet their caps, can purchase credits from certain unregulated entities whose activities are deemed to have resulted in real and additional emission reductions. California has attempted to avoid the Kyoto Protocol's project-by-project lengthy and problematic review of offsets with a performance standard approach for domestic offsets and a sector approach for international offsets. Offsets, even if done right. raise serious environmental justice questions as …


Mapping, Modeling, And The Fragmentation Of Environmental Law., Dave Owen Jan 2013

Mapping, Modeling, And The Fragmentation Of Environmental Law., Dave Owen

Publications

In the past forty years, environmental researchers have achieved major advances in electronic mapping and spatially explicit, computer-based simulation modeling. Those advances have turned quantitative spatial analysis — that is, quantitative analysis of data coded to specific geographic locations — into one of the primary modes of environmental research. Researchers now routinely use spatial analysis to explore environmental trends, diagnose problems, discover causal relationships, predict possible futures, and test policy options. At a more fundamental level, these technologies and an associated field of theory are transforming how researchers conceptualize environmental systems. Advances in spatial analysis have had modest impacts upon …


The Judicial Assault On The Clean Water Act, Mark Squillace Jan 2012

The Judicial Assault On The Clean Water Act, Mark Squillace

Publications

No abstract provided.


Genealogies Of Risk: Searching For Safety, 1930s-1970s, William Boyd Jan 2012

Genealogies Of Risk: Searching For Safety, 1930s-1970s, William Boyd

Publications

Health, safety, and environmental regulation in the United States are saturated with risk thinking. It was not always so, and it may not be so in the future. But today, the formal, quantitative approach to risk provides much of the basis for regulation in these fields, a development that seems quite natural, even necessary. This particular approach, while it drew on conceptual and technical developments that had been underway for decades, achieved prominence during a relatively short timeframe; roughly, between the mid-1970s and the early 1980s--a time of hard looks and regulatory reform. Prior to this time, formal conceptions of …


Who Killed The Hybrid Car? State And Local Green Incentive Programs After Metropolitan Taxicab V. City Of New York, Jonathan Skinner Jan 2011

Who Killed The Hybrid Car? State And Local Green Incentive Programs After Metropolitan Taxicab V. City Of New York, Jonathan Skinner

Publications

Unnecessarily broad preemption ruling under the Energy Policy and Conservation Act discourages other states and municipalities from pursuing innovative, environmentally beneficial policies.


The Curious Case Of Greening In Carbon Markets, William Boyd, James Salzman Jan 2011

The Curious Case Of Greening In Carbon Markets, William Boyd, James Salzman

Publications

Over the last several years, so-called carbon markets have emerged around the world to facilitate trading in greenhouse gas credits. This Article takes a close look at an unexpected and unprecedented development in some of these markets--premium "green" currencies have emerged and, in some cases, displaced standard compliance currencies. Past experiences with other environmental compliance markets, such as the sulfur dioxide and wetlands mitigation markets, suggest the exact opposite should be occurring. Indeed, buyers in such markets should only be interested in buying compliance, not in the underlying environmental integrity of the compliance unit. In some of the compliance carbon …


Climate Change, Fragmentation, And The Challenges Of Global Environmental Law: Elements Of A Post-Copenhagen Assemblage, William Boyd Jan 2010

Climate Change, Fragmentation, And The Challenges Of Global Environmental Law: Elements Of A Post-Copenhagen Assemblage, William Boyd

Publications

The 2009 United Nations climate conference in Copenhagen has been widely viewed as a failure -a referendum in the eyes of many on the top-down, comprehensive approach to climate governance embodied in the Kyoto Protocol and carried forward in efforts to negotiate a successor regime. Despite a modest agreement on future work toward a new agreement, the most recent climate meeting in Cancún, Mexico reinforces this view, underscoring the conclusion that Copenhagen represents an important inflection point for international climate policy. Although much of the post-Copenhagen commentary has correctly identified various problems, even fatal flaws, with the process, very little …


A Green Road To Development: Environmental Regulations And Developing Countries In The Wto, Jonathan Skinner Jan 2010

A Green Road To Development: Environmental Regulations And Developing Countries In The Wto, Jonathan Skinner

Publications

The WTO framework can accommodate enforceable environmentally protective measures.


Ways Of Seeing In Environmental Law: How Deforestation Became An Object Of Climate Governance, William Boyd Jan 2010

Ways Of Seeing In Environmental Law: How Deforestation Became An Object Of Climate Governance, William Boyd

Publications

Few areas of law are as deeply implicated with science and technology as environmental law, yet we have only a cursory understanding of how science and technology shape the field. Environmental law, it seems, has lost sight of the constitutive role that science and technology play in fashioning the problems that it targets for regulation. Too often, the study and practice of environmental law and governance take the object of governance--be it climate change, water pollution, biodiversity, or deforestation--as self-evident, natural, and fully-formed without recognizing the significant scientific and technological investments that go into making such objects and the manner …


The Legacy Of The Bush Ii Administration In Natural Resources: A Work In Progress, David H. Getches Jan 2005

The Legacy Of The Bush Ii Administration In Natural Resources: A Work In Progress, David H. Getches

Publications

No abstract provided.


Energy, Environment & Sustainable Development, Lakshman D. Guruswamy Jan 2005

Energy, Environment & Sustainable Development, Lakshman D. Guruswamy

Publications

No abstract provided.


Aquaculture And Pollutants Under The Clean Water Act: A Case For Regulation, Sean M. Helle Jan 2004

Aquaculture And Pollutants Under The Clean Water Act: A Case For Regulation, Sean M. Helle

Publications

No abstract provided.


Improving State Environmental Enforcement Performance Through Enhanced Government Accountability And Other Strategies, Clifford Rechtschaffen, David L. Markell Jan 2003

Improving State Environmental Enforcement Performance Through Enhanced Government Accountability And Other Strategies, Clifford Rechtschaffen, David L. Markell

Publications

This Article discusses a number of options for EPA to strengthen state performance and bring it more in line with EPA's expectations. First, EPA must play a stricter gate-keeping function in initially authorizing state programs, and more regularly reassess and report the adequacy of state enforcement authorities and state capacity. Second, EPA must stop delivering a mixed message to the states about the enforcement practices it expects the states to follow. Instead, it must establish clear expectations for performance. Third, in terms of the substance of those expectations, EPA should revise its criteria for evaluating whether state enforcement programs work. …


Controlling Toxic Harms: The Struggle Over Dioxin Contamination In The Pulp And Paper Industry, William Boyd Jan 2002

Controlling Toxic Harms: The Struggle Over Dioxin Contamination In The Pulp And Paper Industry, William Boyd

Publications

This essay addresses the challenges of controlling toxic harms through an intensive case study of efforts to regulate and remedy dioxin contamination in the U.S. pulp and paper industry. By focusing on the struggle to control a specific toxic harm in a specific industrial sector, the essay explores the politicized nature of toxic harms in the United States and, in the process, highlights the considerable shortcomings of existing legal frameworks and institutions for dealing with problems of such scope and complexity. In doing so, the essay raises a host of normative issues regarding current institutional arrangements and the appropriate strategy …


Cartography Of Governance: An Introduction, Lakshman D. Guruswamy Jan 2002

Cartography Of Governance: An Introduction, Lakshman D. Guruswamy

Publications

No abstract provided.


The Paper Tiger Awakens: North American Environmental Law After The Cozumel Reef Case, Paul Stanton Kibel Jan 2001

The Paper Tiger Awakens: North American Environmental Law After The Cozumel Reef Case, Paul Stanton Kibel

Publications

This Article examines the citizen submission process created under the North American Agreement on Environmental Cooperation ("NAAEC"), which, along with the North American Free Trade Agreement ("NAFTA "), was adopted by Canada, Mexico, and the United States in 1993. The Article details the historical evolution of North American environmental law and diplomacy in the hundred years prior to the adoption of NAAEC. It proceeds to analyze the environmental provisions of NAAEC and the citizen submissions that have been filed since NAAEC went into effect, and undertakes an in-depth case study of the citizen submission relating to coral reefs in Cozumel, …


Integration & Biocomplexity, Lakshman Guruswamy Jan 2001

Integration & Biocomplexity, Lakshman Guruswamy

Publications

Sustainable development (SD) is premised on the inescapable and integral role played by humans in shaping and impacting the natural world and has been recognized as a foundational norm of international environmental law and policy. Ecologicalism - an outlook that embraces a comprehensive approach to interdependent natural and human systems - provides the conceptual underpinnings for a creative and integrated environmental management philosophy for implementing SD. This Article argues that the daunting task of defining and applying such an integrated approach and philosophy to the multiple interacting changes affecting planetary life support systems can benefit from the U.S. experience in …


The Annihilation Of Sea Turtles: Wto Intransigence And U.S. Equivocation, Lakshman Guruswamy Jan 2000

The Annihilation Of Sea Turtles: Wto Intransigence And U.S. Equivocation, Lakshman Guruswamy

Publications

No abstract provided.


Book Review, Lakshman D. Guruswamy Jan 1996

Book Review, Lakshman D. Guruswamy

Publications

No abstract provided.


An American Perspective On Environmental Impact Assessment In Australia, Mark Squillace Jan 1995

An American Perspective On Environmental Impact Assessment In Australia, Mark Squillace

Publications

No abstract provided.


California Comparative Risk Project (1994). Toward The 21st Century: Planning For The Protection Of California's Environment, Alan Ramo May 1994

California Comparative Risk Project (1994). Toward The 21st Century: Planning For The Protection Of California's Environment, Alan Ramo

Publications

Participants in the California Comparative Risk Project were charged with identifying environmental threats of the greatest ecological, human health, and societal concern using the risk ranking model. However, agreeing that risk is not the only factor that should be considered, our project also examined how economics, pollution prevention, environmental justice, education, and public participation contribute to environmental decision-making. The unique inclusion of this aspect in our project was in response to a growing debate nationally and in California about the limitations of a risk-ranking model for setting environmental priorities. The findings and recommendations of the California Comparative Risk Project are …


The Case For Integrated Pollution Control, Lakshman Guruswamy Jan 1991

The Case For Integrated Pollution Control, Lakshman Guruswamy

Publications

No abstract provided.


Energy And The Environment: Confronting Common Threats To Security, Lakshman Guruswamy Jan 1991

Energy And The Environment: Confronting Common Threats To Security, Lakshman Guruswamy

Publications

No abstract provided.