Law Commons^™

Climate Change Under Nepa: Avoiding Cursory Consideration Of Greenhouse Gases, Amy L. Stein

Amy L. Stein

Neither the National Environmental Policy Act (“NEPA”) nor its implementing regulations require consideration of climate change in NEPA documentation. Yet an ever-growing 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 …

Strategies For Making Sea-Level Rise Adaptation Tools 'Takings-Proof', Michael Allan Wolf

Michael A Wolf

While the costs of some Sea-Level Rise (SLR) adaptation tools are undeniably daunting, the American legal system poses an additional, potentially budget-busting impediment — the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution. Officials at all governmental strata and from all three branches should keep the demands made by the Takings Clause, as interpreted by the judiciary, in mind as they choose tools from the diverse SLR-adaptation toolbox, as they justify their choices to the electorate and other constituencies, as they put those tools to use, and as they defend that use from litigants claiming abuse. This …

Acts Of God Or Toxic Torts? Applying Tort Principles To The Problem Of Climate Change, Eduardo M. Peñalver

Eduardo M. Peñalver

The problem of climate change continues to be an intractable one for policymakers. Uncertainties over the likely costs of climate change as well as over the costs of proposed remedies have hampered the formation of a consensus regarding the best course of action. The principles of tort law provide a useful means of analyzing the problem of climate change, particularly the issue of who should bear the costs associated with its effects. The two major goals of tort law (reducing the costs of accidents and corrective justice) both point towards the appropriateness of placing the costs of climate change on …

A Critical Examination Of The Climate Engineering Moral Hazard And Risk Compensation Concern, Jesse Reynolds

Jesse Reynolds

Observations From The Pilot Study On The Practice And Perspectives Of Lawyers In The United Kingdom And Sweden Regarding Protection From Environmentally Related Harm In An Era Of Climate Change, Matthew Scott

Matthew Scott

A total of nine semi-structured interviews were carried out between November 2013 and April 2014 with senior lawyers specialising in asylum and immigration law in the United Kingdom and Sweden enquiring into their perspectives and practice around the issue of environmentally related cross border displacement. The pilot study suggests that lawyers in Sweden and the United Kingdom are not routinely involved in seeking international protection for individuals who may be at risk of being exposed to environmentally related harm if returned to their countries of origin or habitual residence, although some 'pathways to protection' were identified. I suggest that lawyers …

Global Environmental Law At A Crossroads: Introduction, Robert V. Percival, Jolene Lin, William Piermattei

Robert Percival

No abstract provided.

A Legal Approach To The Improvement Of Energy Efficiency In Europe And The United States: Greening The Existing Building Stock, Teresa -. Parejo

Teresa - Parejo

In large cities buildings are responsible for 40% of energy consumption and 36% of CO2 emissions in the EU, and 70% of energy consumption and 40% of CO2 emissions in the US. Hence, improving the energy performance of buildings is a very cost-effective way to fight against climate change.

Most of the potential for energy savings is in existing buildings so they provide the greatest opportunities and challenges, but the measures adopted until today to improve energy efficiency, despite some innovative proposals, have been insufficient and mainly focused in new buildings. All the actions developed either by the EU and …

The International Regulation Of Climate Engineering: Lessons From Nuclear Power, Jesse Reynolds

Jesse Reynolds

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, …

Refuge From Climate Change-Related Harm: Evaluating The Scope Of International Protection Following New Zealand’S Teitiota Judgment, Matthew Scott

Matthew Scott

Extreme weather events have the potential to cause serious harm and can contribute to displacement. Such events are expected to increase in frequency and/or intensity as a consequence of climate change. It is therefore of concern that there is widely considered to be a protection gap when affected individuals cross an international border. However, apart from a handful of cases in Australia and New Zealand, the contours of this perceived gap have seldom been tested in practice. Most recently, the High Court of New Zealand in Teitiota v Chief Executive of the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment described a …

Regulation Of Greenhouse Gases And Other Air Pollutants In The First Obama Administration And Major Air Issues For The Second Term, Patricia Mccubbin

Patricia Ross McCubbin

President Barack Obama has made addressing climate change the centerpiece of his environmental policy. Most recently, on June 25, 2013, the President gave a groundbreaking speech detailing the steps his administration will take to reduce greenhouse gas emissions throughout the United States. Of great controversy, the President directed the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to limit emissions of greenhouse gases from both new and existing power plants, which represent 40% of total U.S. carbon emissions. The President’s call to action – in his June 2013 speech and throughout his first term – stands in stark contrast to Congress’s inability to …

Putting A Price On Carbon: The Metaphor, David M. Driesen

David M Driesen

This Essay analyzes the characterization of both pollution taxes and so-called cap-and-trade programs addressing greenhouse gas emissions as policies that “put a price on carbon,” a characterization that has come to dominate both policy discussion and much modern scholarship on environmental instrument choice. It shows that the rationale for characterizing cap-and-trade— a quantitative rather than a pricing mechanism— as putting a price on carbon suggests that analysts should likewise treat traditional regulation as a mechanism putting a price on carbon. Treating “market-based mechanisms” as uniquely putting a price on carbon reflects and perpetuates a tendency to see markets and government …

Coping With Climate: Legal Innovation In The Absence Of Full Reform, Robert R.M. Verchick, Faye Sheets

Robert R.M. Verchick

In the absence of a federal legislation directing government to adapt to the unavoidable effects of climate change, the Obama administration has put its faith in existing environmental laws like the Clean Air Act (“CAA”), the Endangered Species Act (“ESA”), and the National Environmental Policy Act (“NEPA”). But often federal objectives focus only on reducing greenhouse gases—what experts call “mitigation”—and neglect strategies for coping with the climate disruptions that we cannot avoid—otherwise known as “adaptation.” Where the federal policy falls short, states are beginning to experiment on their own with climate adaptation strategies. This essay examines both approaches, mitigation and …

The Sun Also Rises: Prospects For Solar District Heating In The United States, Adam L. Reed, John S. Mccartney

Kevin L Doran

Renewable thermal energy remains a largely untapped resource in the United States, despite its low costs and growing popularity in many other countries and the pressing need to rapidly deploy and scale carbon-free energy sources in order to mitigate anthropogenic climate change. In this article, an energy attorney and a civil engineer collaborate to examine the prospects in the United States for solar district heating (SDH), a thermal technology that leverages economies of scale to provide zero-carbon, round-the-clock space and water heating (on average, the two largest components of building energy demand) to neighborhoods and commercial zones at costs competitive …

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

Kenneth T Kristl

No abstract provided.

Evolution Of U.S. Climate Policy, John Dernbach, Robert Altenburg

John C. Dernbach

No abstract provided.

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, …

International Economic Law And The Right To Food, Carmen G. Gonzalez

Carmen G. Gonzalez

This chapter examines the historic and current policies and practices that have contributed to food insecurity in the global South. It analyzes the impact of international economic law on the patterns of trade and production that perpetuate food insecurity, and recommends concrete measures that the international community might take through law and regulation to promote the fundamental human right to food. Part I provides a short introduction to the right to food framework and its implications for international trade, investment, and finance. Part II places the current food crisis in historical perspective by discussing the trade and aid policies that …

Climate Engineering Field Research: The Favorable Setting Of International Environmental Law, Jesse Reynolds

Jesse Reynolds