Law Commons^™

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

Jesse Reynolds

Delinking International Environmental Law & Climate Change, Cinnamon Carlarne

Michigan Journal of Environmental & Administrative Law

This Article challenges the existing paradigm in international law that frames global efforts to address climate change as a problem of and for international environmental law. The most recent climate reports tell us that warming is unequivocal and that we are already experiencing the impacts of climate change at the domestic level in the United States. Against this backdrop, much has been written recently in the United States about domestic efforts to address climate change. These efforts are important, but they leave open the question of how the global community can work together to address the greatest collective action problem …

Slides: Regulating Oil And Gas Emissions In The Denver Julesberg Basin, Garry Kaufman

Water and Air Quality Issues in Oil and Gas Development: The Evolving Framework of Regulation and Management (Martz Summer Conference, June 5-6)

Presenter: Garry Kaufman, Deputy Director, Colorado Air Pollution Control Division

25 slides

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 …

Let Them Eat Carbon: The End Of The Kyoto Protocol, Aiten J. Musaeva Mcpherson

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

Keynote Remarks At The University Of Michigan Environmental Law And Public Health Conference, Gina Mccarthy

Michigan Journal of Environmental & Administrative Law

The following are the prepared remarks delivered at the University of Michigan Law School’s 2013 Environmental Law and Public Health Conference on September 26, 2013.

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 …

Climate Change Triage, Noah M. Sachs

Law Faculty Publications

Climate change is the first global triage crisis. It is caused by the overuse of a severely limited natural resource—the atmosphere’s capacity to absorb greenhouse gases—and millions of lives depend on how international law allocates this resource among nations.

This Article is the first to explore solutions for climate change mitigation through the lens of triage ethics, drawing on law, philosophy, moral theory, and economics. The literature on triage ethics—developed in contexts such as battlefield trauma, organ donation, emergency medicine, and distribution of food and shelter—has direct implications for climate change policy and law, yet it has been overlooked by …

Fundamental Principles Of Law For The Anthropocene?, Nicholas A. Robinson

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

A wide array of questions arises from global change to confront environmental law. The IPCC has examined social decisions affecting the climate in the design of human settlements, transport systems, industrialisation, agriculture and silviculture, waste management, provisions for energy, and virtually all other socio-economic dimensions of human life. The AR-5, too, cannot avoid raising issues of human ethics and values at local and regional scales. Such issues reach environmental policy and law directly. The IPCC’s AR-5 report furthers widespread public debate about the human dimensions of climate change, and how social theory relates to environmental change. Already, climate change has …

Holistic Climate Change Governance: Towards Mitigation And Adaptation Synthesis, Katherine Trisolini

University of Colorado Law Review

Climate change already has begun destabilizing natural systems, prompting unprecedented heat waves, droughts, floods, and severe storms. While scientists admonish us that greenhouse gases must be cut deeply and quickly to avoid the worst impacts, past emissions have committed the planet to some further warming. Resulting physical changes will require a legal system that functions amidst extreme weather, rising seas, and scientific uncertainty about the stability of natural systems upon which we relied in designing institutions and infrastructure. An effective response requires both substantial reductions in greenhouse gas emissions to limit the harm ("mitigation') and significant adaptation. Scholars and policymakers …

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 …