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Full-Text Articles in Law
The Pandemic Legacy: Accounting For Working-From-Home Emissions, Michael P. Vandenbergh, Sharon Shemake
The Pandemic Legacy: Accounting For Working-From-Home Emissions, Michael P. Vandenbergh, Sharon Shemake
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in millions of employees working from home, a development that is challenging public and private standards for reporting and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Under these standards, corporations disclose the emissions from large buildings and the power plants that supply them with energy, but most do not report other types of emissions. When employees shift from working at an office to working at home, the corporate emissions appear to have decreased even though they have simply shifted beyond the boundary of the reporting requirement. This move creates greenwashing risks--the ability to claim that corporate greenhouse gas …
Private Governance Responses To Climate Change: The Case Of Global Civil Aviation, Michael P. Vandenbergh, Daniel J. Metzger
Private Governance Responses To Climate Change: The Case Of Global Civil Aviation, Michael P. Vandenbergh, Daniel J. Metzger
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
This Article explores how private governance can reduce the climate effects of global civil aviation. The civil aviation sector is a major contributor to climate change, accounting for emissions comparable to a top ten emitting country. National and international governmental bodies have taken important steps to address civil aviation, but the measures adopted to date are widely acknowledged to be inadequate. Civil aviation poses particularly difficult challenges for government climate mitigation efforts. Many civil aviation firms operate globally, emissions often occur outside of national boundaries, nations differ on their respective responsibilities, and demand is growing rapidly. Although promising new technologies …
The Production Function Of The Regulatory State, J.B. Ruhl, Jonathan R. Nash, James Salzman
The Production Function Of The Regulatory State, J.B. Ruhl, Jonathan R. Nash, James Salzman
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
How much will our budget be cut be this year? This question has loomed ominously over regulatory agencies for over three decades. After the 2016 presidential election, it now stands front and center in federal policy, with the Trump administration pledging over $50 billion in cuts. Yet very little is known about the fundamental relationship between regulatory agencies budgets and the social welfare outcomes they are charged to produce. Indeed, the question is scarcely studied in scholarship from law, economics, or political science. This article lays the groundwork for a new field of theoretical and empirical research, using what we …
Beyond Gridlock, Michael P. Vandenbergh, Jonathan A. Gilligan
Beyond Gridlock, Michael P. Vandenbergh, Jonathan A. Gilligan
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
Private climate governance can achieve major greenhouse gas (“GHG”) emissions reductions while governments are in gridlock. Despite the optimism that emerged from the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in 1992, almost a quarter century later the federal legislative process and international climate negotiations are years from a comprehensive response. Yet Microsoft, Google and many other companies have committed to become carbon neutral. Wal-Mart has partnered with the Environmental Defense Fund to secure 20 million tons of GHG emissions reductions from its suppliers around the world, an amount equal to almost half the emissions from the US iron and …
Private Environmental Governance, Michael P. Vandenbergh
Private Environmental Governance, Michael P. Vandenbergh
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
Environmental law has quietly transformed from a positive law field deeply rooted in administrative law to one that is also heavily rooted in private law and private governance. After two decades (1970-1990) of remarkable activity, more than two decades have now passed without a major federal environmental statute (1991-2012). Whether the appropriate next step is expansion or contraction, reforms to the federal statutory framework have stalled. Federal regulatory activity and state and local measures have filled some of the gap, but private governance efforts – the pursuit of public ends through private standards, monitoring, enforcement, and dispute resolution – now …