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Articles 151 - 180 of 386
Full-Text Articles in Environmental Law
Harmonizing Commercial Wind Power And The Endangered Species Act Through Administrative Reform, J.B. Ruhl
Harmonizing Commercial Wind Power And The Endangered Species Act Through Administrative Reform, J.B. Ruhl
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
This Article explores the intersection of utility-scale wind power development and the Endangered Species Act, which thus far has not been as happy a union as one might expect. Part I provides background on how the ESA and wind power have met in policy, permitting, and litigation. Part II then examines whether wind power (and other renewable energy sources) can and should receive a green pass under the ESA given its unquestioned climate change mitigation benefits, concluding that doing so would face a host of legal and policy concerns. Part III then outlines a model for administrative innovation of ESA …
Good For You, Bad For Us: The Financial Disincentive For Net Demand Reduction, Michael P. Vandenbergh, Jim Rossi
Good For You, Bad For Us: The Financial Disincentive For Net Demand Reduction, Michael P. Vandenbergh, Jim Rossi
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
This Article examines a principal barrier to reducing U.S. carbon emissions — electricity distributors’ financial incentives to sell more of their product — and introduces the concept of net demand reduction (“NDR”) as a primary goal for the modern energy regulatory system. Net electricity demand must decrease substantially from projected levels for the United States to achieve widely-endorsed carbon targets by 2050. Although social and behavioral research has identified cost-effective ways to reduce electricity demand, state-of-the-art programs to curtail demand have not been implemented on a widespread basis. We argue that electric distribution utilities are important gatekeepers that can determine …
Supply And Demand: Barriers To A New Energy Future, Jim Rossi, Michael P. Vandenbergh, J. B. Ruhl
Supply And Demand: Barriers To A New Energy Future, Jim Rossi, Michael P. Vandenbergh, J. B. Ruhl
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
Like many fields, energy law has had its ups and downs. A period of remarkable activity in the 1970s and early 1980s focused on the efficiencies arising from deregulation of energy markets, but the field attracted much less attention during the 1990s. In the last decade, a new burst of activity has occurred, driven largely by the implications of energy production and use for climate change. In effect, this new scholarship is asking what efficiency means in a carbon-constrained world. Accounting for carbon has induced scholars to challenge the implicit assumption of the early scholarship that the price of energy …
The Endangered Species Act's Fall From Grace In The Supreme Court, J.B. Ruhl
The Endangered Species Act's Fall From Grace In The Supreme Court, J.B. Ruhl
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
Thirty-five years ago, the Endangered Species Act ("ESA") had as auspicious a debut in the U.S. Supreme Court as any statute could hope for. In Tennessee Valley Authority v. Hill, a majority of the Court proclaimed that the ESA was intended "to halt and reverse the trend toward species extinction, whatever the cost" and backed up those and other bold words by preventing a nearly completed federal dam from impounding its reservoir because doing so would eliminate the only known (at the time) habitat of a small fish, the now infamous snail darter. To this day, Hill remains actively discussed …
The Political Economy Of Climate Change Winners, J.B. Ruhl
The Political Economy Of Climate Change Winners, J.B. Ruhl
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
Many people and businesses in the United States stand to receive market and nonmarket benefits from climate change as it moves forward over the next 100 years. Speaking of climate change benefits is not for polite 'green' conversation, but ignoring them as climate policy dialogue and legal scholarship consistently have" will not make them go away. It is important to take climate change benefits into account if they lead people and businesses to believe that climate change will not be so bad for them, or even to believe it has made them into climate change winners. Thus, whereas legal scholars …
Warning: May Cause Warming, Marcy N. Moody
Warning: May Cause Warming, Marcy N. Moody
Vanderbilt Law Review
Browsing the aisles of her local grocery store, a shopper may come across a dusty unmarked bin with carrots in it. She may see a shelf of brightly colored cereal boxes touting their contents' health benefits. Elsewhere in the store may be an iced container of sustainable shrimp from Thailand with a circled blue checkmark next to it. Perhaps there are local leeks, organic okra, or eggs from free- ranging chickens. The shopper may select the cereal on the basis of its health claims, the shrimp on the basis of its environmental friendliness, or maybe just the carrot because she …
The Potential Role Of Carbon Labeling In A Green Economy, Michael P. Vandenbergh, Mark A. Cohen
The Potential Role Of Carbon Labeling In A Green Economy, Michael P. Vandenbergh, Mark A. Cohen
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
Over the past several years, labeling schemes that focus on a wide range of environmental and social metrics have proliferated. Although little empirical evidence has been generated yet with respect to carbon footprint labels, much can be learned from our experience with similar product labels. We first review the theory and evidence on the role of product labeling in affecting consumer and firm behavior. Next, we consider the role of governments and nongovernmental organizations, concluding that international, multistakeholder organizations have a critical part to play in setting protocols and standards. We argue that it is important to consider the entire …
Panarchy And The Law, J.B. Ruhl
Panarchy And The Law, J.B. Ruhl
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
Panarchy theory focuses on improving theories of change in natural and social systems to improve the design of policy responses. Its central thesis is that successfully working with the dynamic forces of complex adaptive natural and social systems demands an active adaptive management regime that eschews optimization approaches that seek stability. This is a new approach to resources management, and yet no new theory of how to do things in environmental and natural resources management, particularly one challenging entrenched ways of doing things and the interests aligned around them, is likely to gain traction in practice if it cannot gain …
Alternative Policies To Increase Recycling Of Plastic Water Bottles In The United States, W. Kip Viscusi, Joel Huber, Jason Bell
Alternative Policies To Increase Recycling Of Plastic Water Bottles In The United States, W. Kip Viscusi, Joel Huber, Jason Bell
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
Using an original, nationally representative sample of plastic water bottle users, this article examines the efficacy of various policy mechanisms to increase recycling. We evaluate the impact of bottle deposits and the stringency of a state’s recycling laws on the provision of recycling opportunities and on recycling rates. Using household-level data and controlling for the type of recycling legal regime as well as the bottle deposit policies in each state, we find that mandated separation of recyclables, the availability of a recycling center in the community, and the provision of curbside pickup at houses or recycling locations at apartments increase …
The Behavioral Response To Voluntary Provision Of An Environmental Public Good, Grant D. Jacobsen, Matthew J. Kotchen, Michael P. Vandenbergh
The Behavioral Response To Voluntary Provision Of An Environmental Public Good, Grant D. Jacobsen, Matthew J. Kotchen, Michael P. Vandenbergh
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
This paper develops a theory of voluntary provision of a public good in which a household’s decision to engage in a form of environmentally friendly behavior is based on the desire to offset another behavior that is environmentally harmful. The model generates predictions about (1) participation in a green-electricity program at the extensive and intensive margins, and (2) changes in electricity consumption in response to participation. We test the theory using billing data for participants and nonparticipants in a green-electricity program in Memphis, Tennessee. High-consumption households are more likely to participate, and they participate at higher levels. In terms of …
The Grass Is Always Greener: Keystone Xl, Transboundary Harms, And Guidelines For Cooperative Environmental-Impact Assessment, Wyatt Sassman
The Grass Is Always Greener: Keystone Xl, Transboundary Harms, And Guidelines For Cooperative Environmental-Impact Assessment, Wyatt Sassman
Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law
While general understanding of environmental harms has become more geographically sophisticated, environmental-impact assessment (EIA) law has lagged behind. Although nations now understand complex environmental processes and relationships that extend well beyond their borders, EIA law remains trapped in a domestic structure that is ill-prepared to assess harms outside its jurisdiction. By looking at the U.S. environmental assessment of the Keystone XL pipeline, this Note recasts the problem of transboundary environmental harms in EIA using recent, remarkable events. Key assumptions made in the Keystone XL assessment illustrate that the typical domestic structure of EIA law does not allow adequate assessment of …
An Empirical Assessment Of Climate Change In The Courts: A New Jurisprudence Or Business As Usual?, J.B. Ruhl, David L. Markell
An Empirical Assessment Of Climate Change In The Courts: A New Jurisprudence Or Business As Usual?, J.B. Ruhl, David L. Markell
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
While legal scholarship seeking to assess the impact of litigation on the direction of climate change policy is abundant and growing in leaps and bounds, to date it has relied on and examined only small, isolated pieces of the vast litigation landscape. Without a complete picture of what has and has not been within the sweep of climate change litigation, it is difficult to offer a robust evaluation of the past, present, and future of climate change jurisprudence. Based on a comprehensive empirical study of the status of all (201) climate change litigation matters filed through 2010, this Article is …
Global Public Goods, Governance Risk, And International Energy, Timothy Meyer
Global Public Goods, Governance Risk, And International Energy, Timothy Meyer
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
Scholars and commentators have long argued that issue linkages provide a way to increase cooperation on global public goods by increasing participation in global institutions, building consensus, and deterring free-riding. In this symposium article, I argue that the emphasis on the potential of issue linkages to facilitate cooperation in these ways has caused commentators to underestimate how common features of international legal institutions designed to accomplish these aims can actually undermine those institutions’ ability to facilitate cooperation. I focus on two features of institutional design that are intended to encourage participation in public goods institutions but can create the risk …
Clean Energy And The Price Preemption Ceiling, Jim Rossi
Clean Energy And The Price Preemption Ceiling, Jim Rossi
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
Since the New Deal, federal preemption has precluded many state and local regulatory decisions that depart from wholesale electric prices determined under federal standards. Recent decisions treat prices that meet the federal standard as a preemption ceiling, which prohibits states from setting prices that exceed the wholesale price set in a competitive market. Both appellate courts and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission - the primary federal agency responsible for the electric power sector - have recently applied a price preemption ceiling to clean energy policies. I argue in this Article that this price ceiling preemption approach hobbles the advancement of …
Deepwater Drilling: Law, Policy, And Economics Of Firm Organization And Safety, Mark A. Cohen, Madeline Gottlieb, Joshua Linn, Nathan Richardson
Deepwater Drilling: Law, Policy, And Economics Of Firm Organization And Safety, Mark A. Cohen, Madeline Gottlieb, Joshua Linn, Nathan Richardson
Vanderbilt Law Review
Although the causes of the Deepwater Horizon spill are not yet conclusively identified, significant attention has focused on the safety-related policies and practices-often referred to as the safety culture-of BP and other firms involved in drilling the well. This Article defines and characterizes the economic and policy forces that affect safety culture and identifies reasons why those forces may or may not be adequate or effective from the public's perspective. Two potential justifications for policy intervention are that: (1) not all of the social costs of a spill may be internalized by a firm; and (2) there may be principal-agent …
Real-Time Economic Analysis And Policy Development During The Bp "Deepwater Horizon" Oil Spill, Joseph E. Aldy
Real-Time Economic Analysis And Policy Development During The Bp "Deepwater Horizon" Oil Spill, Joseph E. Aldy
Vanderbilt Law Review
The 2010 BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill posed near-term economic risks to the Gulf of Mexico region and raised questions about appropriate policies to mitigate catastrophic oil-spill risks. This Essay reviews the Obama Administration's assessment of the economic vulnerabilities to the spill, the Administration's May 12, 2010, legislative proposal focused on minimizing the adverse economic impacts to workers and small businesses in the Gulf of Mexico, and the effort to secure an agreement with BP to ensure that those harmed by the spill will receive full compensation. Then, the Essay discusses several of the policy reforms advanced by the Administration …
Coastal Wetland Restoration And The "Deepwater Horizon" Oil Spill, Edward B. Barbier
Coastal Wetland Restoration And The "Deepwater Horizon" Oil Spill, Edward B. Barbier
Vanderbilt Law Review
Both the 2005 Hurricanes Katrina and Rita and the 2010 BP oil spill have focused attention on the need to restore coastal wetland habitats along the Gulf of Mexico of the United States. As restoration is required by the Oil Pollution Act of 1990, restoring coastal wetlands will be required as part of BP's legal obligations. Although plans to restore the Mississippi River Delta are well on their way, the damages to the Gulf Coast wetlands caused by the Deepwater Horizon spill are still occurring and have yet to be fully assessed. At this critical time for wetland restoration in …
Deepwater Drilling: Law, Policy, And Economics Of Firm Organization And Safety, Mark A. Cohen
Deepwater Drilling: Law, Policy, And Economics Of Firm Organization And Safety, Mark A. Cohen
Vanderbilt Law Review
Nathan Richardson 64 Vand. L. Rev. 1853 (2011) Although the causes of the Deepwater Horizon spill are not yet conclusively identified, significant attention has focused on the safety-related policies and practices-often referred to as the safety culture-of BP and other firms involved in drilling the well. This Article defines and characterizes the economic and policy forces that affect safety culture and identifies reasons why those forces may or may not be adequate or effective from the public's perspective. Two potential justifications for policy intervention are that: (1) not all of the social costs of a spill may be internalized by …
Deterring And Compensating Oil-Spill Catastrophes: The Need For Strict And Two-Tier Liability, W. Kip Viscusi, Richard J. Zeckhauser
Deterring And Compensating Oil-Spill Catastrophes: The Need For Strict And Two-Tier Liability, W. Kip Viscusi, Richard J. Zeckhauser
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
The BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill highlighted the glaring weaknesses in the current liability and regulatory regime for oil spills and for environmental catastrophes more broadly. This Article proposes a new liability structure for deep-sea oil drilling and for catastrophic risks generally. It delineates a two-tier system of liability. The first tier would impose strict liability up to the firm's financial resources, including insurance coverage. The second tier would be an annual tax equal to the expected costs in the coming year beyond this damages amount. Before beginning a risky operation, the proposed liability scheme would identify a single firm-the …
The One Percent Problem, Kevin M. Stack, Michael P. Vandenbergh
The One Percent Problem, Kevin M. Stack, Michael P. Vandenbergh
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
Parties frequently seek exemption from regulation on the ground that they contribute only a very small share to a problem. These one percent arguments are not inherently questionable; it can be efficient to exclude relatively small contributors. These arguments for exemption garner broad acceptance in part because they appeal to behavioral biases that induce individuals to discount or ignore small values. But when a regulatory problem can be solved only by regulating small contributors, accepting one percent arguments creates what we call the one percent problem. This Article shows that this general problem for regulation has particularly damaging effects on …
Deterring And Compensating Oil-Spill Catastrophes: The Need For Strict And Two-Tier Liability, W. Kip Viscusi, Richard J. Zeckhauser
Deterring And Compensating Oil-Spill Catastrophes: The Need For Strict And Two-Tier Liability, W. Kip Viscusi, Richard J. Zeckhauser
Vanderbilt Law Review
The BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill highlighted the glaring weaknesses in the current liability and regulatory regime for oil spills and for environmental catastrophes more broadly. This Article proposes a new liability structure for deep-sea oil drilling and for catastrophic risks generally. It delineates a two-tier system of liability. The first tier would impose strict liability up to the firm's financial resources, including insurance coverage. The second tier would be an annual tax equal to the expected costs in the coming year beyond this damages amount. Before beginning a risky operation, the proposed liability scheme would identify a single firm-the …
Heterogeneity In Values Of Morbidity Risks From Drinking Water, W. Kip Viscusi, Joel Huber, Jason Bell
Heterogeneity In Values Of Morbidity Risks From Drinking Water, W. Kip Viscusi, Joel Huber, Jason Bell
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
This paper reports the stated preference values for reducing the morbidity risks from drinking water estimated using a nationally representative U.S. sample of 3,585 households. Based on the average annual gastrointestinal (GI) illness risk in the U.S. from drinking water of about 5 illnesses per 100 population, eliminating the GI risk has a median annual value per household of $219. The considerable heterogeneity in the values arises largely from differences in attitudes towards risk and price sensitivity. Using interval regressions, we find that valuations are greater for those who perceive a high personal risk, consume a large quantity of tap …
General Design Principles For Resilience And Adaptive Capacity In Legal Systems--With Applications To Climate Change Adaptation, J.B. Ruhl
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
No force has put more pressure on the legal system than is likely to be exerted as climate change begins to disrupt the settled expectations of humans. Demands on the legal system will be intense and long-term, but is the law up to the task? If it is, it will at least in part be because the legal system proves to be resilient and adaptive. The question this Article explores, therefore, is how to think about designing legal instruments and institutions now with confidence they will be resilient and adaptive to looming problems as massive, variable, and long-term in scale …
Promoting Recycling: Private Values, Social Norms, And Economic Incentives, W. Kip Viscusi, Joel Huber, Jason Bell
Promoting Recycling: Private Values, Social Norms, And Economic Incentives, W. Kip Viscusi, Joel Huber, Jason Bell
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
Individual behaviors that benefit the environment are potentially influenced by personal values of environmental quality, social norms that encourage proenvironmental actions, and economic incentives. Economic incentives often loom particularly large, including those that result from environmental policies. Less well understood are the respective roles of private values and social norms. Do people undertake proenvironmental actions more out of their personal valuations of the environment that might be characterized as warm glow effects or from the social norms that reinforce proenvironmental behaviors?
Macro-Risks: The Challenge For Rational Risk Regulation, Michael P. Vandenbergh, Jonathan A. Gilligan
Macro-Risks: The Challenge For Rational Risk Regulation, Michael P. Vandenbergh, Jonathan A. Gilligan
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
Drawing on the recent financial crisis, we introduce the concept of macro-risk. We distinguish between micro-risks, which can be managed within conventional economic frameworks, and macro-risks, which threaten to disrupt economic systems so much that a different approach is required. We argue that catastrophic climate change is a prime example of a macro-risk. Research by climate scientists suggests disturbingly high likelihoods of temperature increases and sea level rises that could cause the kinds of systemic failures that almost occurred with the financial system. We suggest that macro-risks should be the principal concern of rational risk assessment and management, but they …
Gaming The Past: The Theory And Practice Of Historic Baselines In The Administrative State, J.B. Ruhl, James Salzman
Gaming The Past: The Theory And Practice Of Historic Baselines In The Administrative State, J.B. Ruhl, James Salzman
Vanderbilt Law Review
In 1988, candidate George H. W. Bush was in a tight race for the presidency, behind in the polls to the Democratic challenger, Michael Dukakis. Stung by the D+ grade given by the League of Conservation Voters, Bush was searching for a way to claw back some of the environmental vote.' He saw an opening in wetlands. Perceived as worthless swamps and wasted development opportunities for most of our nation's history, conversion of wetlands for agricultural and urban land uses has resulted in a staggering loss of resources. Beginning in the 1970s, however, views started to change, with growing recognition …
Building A Latin American Coalition On Forests: Negotiation Barriers And Opportunities, Maria Banda, John Oppermann
Building A Latin American Coalition On Forests: Negotiation Barriers And Opportunities, Maria Banda, John Oppermann
Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law
This Article looks at how these difficulties might be remedied to allow Latin America to lead the world to a robust anti-deforestation agreement. Part I provides a concise background on the REDD talks at the 2009 Copenhagen Climate Conference, which serves as a useful illustration of the substantive and procedural challenges in the ongoing deforestation negotiations. It identifies the main stakeholders at the climate talks and the camps in which national delegations organized themselves at Copenhagen. It then reviews the major substantive roadblocks in the REDD negotiations and identifies a series of analytical, ideological, and structural barriers that impeded significant …
Gaming The Past: The Theory And Practice Of Historic Baselines In The Administrative State, J.B. Ruhl, James Salzman
Gaming The Past: The Theory And Practice Of Historic Baselines In The Administrative State, J.B. Ruhl, James Salzman
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
This article explores in detail the attributes and operation of historic baselines. That historic baselines are found throughout regulatory law is no accident. Particularly when the policy goal involves turning back the clock or halting an undesirable trend, historic baselines have distinct advantages compared to alternative techniques for standard setting. These advantages include rhetoric, familiarity, and flexibility. The use of the temporal reference point lies at the heart of what makes historic baselines distinct in this respect, yet it is also what makes them qualitatively different for purposes of gaming. Leveraging the past provides an additional dimension to the gaming …
Survey Mode Effects On Valuation Of Environmental Goods, W. Kip Viscusi, Jason Bell, Joel Huber
Survey Mode Effects On Valuation Of Environmental Goods, W. Kip Viscusi, Jason Bell, Joel Huber
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
This article evaluates the effect of the choice of survey recruitment mode on the value of water quality in lakes, rivers, and streams. Four different modes are compared: bringing respondents to one central location after phone recruitment, mall intercepts in two states, national phone-mail survey, and an Internet survey with a national, probability-based sample. The modes differ in terms of the representativeness of the samples, non-response rates, sample selection effects, and consistency of responses. The article also shows that the estimated benefit value can differ substantially depending on the survey mode. The national Internet panel has the most desirable properties …
Regulation In The Behavioral Era, Lisa Schultz Bressman, Michael P. Vandenbergh, Amanda R. Carrico
Regulation In The Behavioral Era, Lisa Schultz Bressman, Michael P. Vandenbergh, Amanda R. Carrico
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
Administrative agencies have long proceeded on the assumption that individuals respond to regulations in ways that are consistent with traditional rational actor theory, but that is beginning to change. Agencies are now relying on behavioral economics to develop regulations that account for responses that depart from common sense and common wisdom, reflecting predictable cognitive anomalies. Furthermore, political officials have now called for behavioral economics to play an explicit role in White House review of agency regulations. This is a significant development for the regulatory process, yet our understanding of how behavioral insights should alter regulatory analysis is incomplete. To account …