Environmental Law Commons^™

The Eminence Of Imminence And The Myopia Of Markets, Teneille R. Brown

Utah Law Faculty Scholarship

This article questions the privileging of disaster, or imminent threat, over more distant threats to public health. In many cases, this privileging makes sense as we do not have time to evaluate the threat under traditional frameworks. But in some cases, we privilege disaster in ways that may be ethically and legally unsound. Here I am interested in a particular type of public health threat – the negative consequences that stem from climate change. In this article I view the climate change discussion through the lens of distributive justice. I analyze the ethical as well as legal arguments for encouraging …

Greenhouse Gas Disclosure Requirements Are Proliferating, Michael B. Gerrard

Faculty Scholarship

While climate change legislation is mired in Congress, several units in the Obama administration have been using their existing statutory authority to adopt rules or guidance requiring extensive disclosures about greenhouse gases (GHGs) in a wide variety of contexts. Every registered public company, the operators of many industrial facilities, and those involved in significant federal actions are now or will soon be covered by one or more of these requirements.

Moving Global Health Law Upstream: A Critical Appraisal Of Global Health Law As A Tool For Health Adaptation To Climate Change, Lindsay Wiley

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

The relatively new discipline of global health law is a potentially powerful tool for promoting health adaptation to climate change. Unfortunately, global climate change will intensify exactly those health threats that have not been adequately addressed by multilateral cooperation with respect to health in the past, which has been dominated by security-based and treatment-focused approaches. Recent focus on biosecurity concerns such as the global spread of emerging infectious diseases and biological terrorism has further entrenched a security-based approach to global health law and policy that has origins in the earliest attempts at international health cooperation and is currently embodied in …

Mitigation/Adaptation And Health: Health Policymaking In The Global Response To Climate Change And Implications For Other Upstream Determinants, Lindsay Wiley

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

No abstract provided.

Implications Of The Copenhagen Accord For Global Climate Change, David Hunter

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

No abstract provided.

Adaptation To The Health Consequences Of Climate Change As A Potential Influence On Public Health Law And Policy: From Preparedness To Resilience, Lindsay Wiley

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

Because the health effects of climate change are likely to be significant and far-reaching, a key component of climate change adaptation will be our public health infrastructure. Perhaps counter-intuitively, recent emphasis in public health law on preparedness for extraordinary events may be to the detriment of our ability to cope with the health impacts of climate change. While existing emergency preparedness law will necessarily be an important backdrop for health-focused climate change adaptation efforts (especially with regard to natural disasters and infectious disease outbreaks), the focus on emergency preparedness in recent years does not necessarily situate us well for handling …

Introductory Comments: The Current State Of Climate Change Law, Michael B. Gerrard

Faculty Scholarship

The three words that best characterize the current state of climate change law are fragmentation, uncertainty, and insufficiency.

Ahistorical Indians And Reservation Resources, Ezra Rosser

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

The article is an in-depth exploration of the impacts of an Indian tribe's decision to pursue an environmentally destructive form of economic development. The history of Navajo Nation's coal leasing provides the background for the tribe's recent proposal to build a coal-fired power plant and the controversies surrounding the proposal and the environmental review process.

Enabling Investment In Environmental Sustainability, Heather Hughes

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

No abstract provided.

Hicks V. Dowd, Conservation Easements, And The Charitable Trust Doctrine: Setting The Record Straight, W. William Weeks, Nancy A. Mclaughlin

Articles by Maurer Faculty

This is the fourth in an exchange of articles published by the Wyoming Law Review discussing the application of charitable trust principles to conservation easements conveyed as charitable gifts. In 2002, Johnson County, Wyoming, attempted to terminate a conservation easement that had been conveyed to the County as a tax-deductible charitable gift. The County's actions were challenged, first in a suit brought by a resident of the County, Hicks v. Dowd, and then in a suit brought by the Wyoming Attorney General, Salzburg v. Dowd. The over six years of litigation associated with the easement's attempted termination has been the …

The Legal Challenge Of Protecting Animal Migrations As Phenomena Of Abundance, Robert L. Fischman, Jeffrey B. Hyman

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Animal migrations are as familiar as geese in the sky on a fall afternoon and as mysterious as the peregrinations of sea turtles across thousands of miles of open ocean. This article discusses the distinguishing attributes of animal migrations, why they are important to biodiversity conservation, and the legal challenges posed by migration conservation. In particular, the article focuses on those aspects of migration conservation that existing law, dominated by imperiled species protection, fails to address. It consequently suggests law reforms that would better conserve animal migrations. A step toward serious legal efforts to protect the process and function of …

The Legal Challenge Of Protecting Animal Migrations As Phenomena Of Abundance, Robert L. Fischman, Jeffrey B. Hyman

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Animal migrations are as familiar as geese in the sky on a fall afternoon and as mysterious as the peregrinations of sea turtles across thousands of miles of open ocean. This article discusses the distinguishing attributes of animal migrations, why they are important to biodiversity conservation, and the legal challenges posed by migration conservation. In particular, the article focuses on those aspects of migration conservation that existing law, dominated by imperiled species protection, fails to address. It consequently suggests law reforms that would better conserve animal migrations. A step toward serious legal efforts to protect the process and function of …

Adaptive Management In The Courts, Robert L. Fischman, J. B. Ruhl

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Adaptive management has become the tonic of natural resources policy. With its core idea of “learning while doing,” adaptive management has infused the natural resources policy world to the point of ubiquity, surfacing in everything from mundane agency permits to grand presidential proclamations. Indeed, it is no exaggeration to suggest that these days adaptive management is natural resources policy. But is it working? Does appending “adaptive” in front of “management” somehow make natural resources policy, which has always been about balancing competing claims to nature’s bounty, something more and better? Many legal and policy scholars have asked that question, with …

Municipal Green Building Ordinances In The U.S., Marne Sussman

Sabin Center for Climate Change Law

Numerous municipalities in the U.S. have created green building ordinances over the past few years. These ordinances are cataloged and examined in the municipal green building ordinance spreadsheets on the website of the Center for Climate Change Law. To better understand the decisions that need to be made in developing a model green building ordinance, this paper discusses the different choices made by the municipalities that developed the ordinances identified in the spreadsheets and notes areas of consensus among municipalities.

Cap-And-Trade Under The Clean Air Act?: Rethinking Section 115, Hannah Chang

Sabin Center for Climate Change Law

Section 115 of the Clean Air Act, addressing international air pollution, is widely-dismissed as a viable avenue for mitigation of greenhouse gases (GHGs) because of a misplaced assumption that National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) must be established for GHGs before Section 115 authority can be exercised for GHGs. This paper explores the statutory language and legislative history of Section 115 to refute this conventional view, and argues that Section 115 can play a role in facilitating the establishment of a cap-and-trade program for GHGs without the establishment of NAAQS for GHGs.

"It's Not Easy Being Green": Local Initiatives, Preemption Problems, And The Market Participant Exception, Michael Burger

Sabin Center for Climate Change Law

This Article considers whether the market participant exception should be interpreted to exempt local climate change and sustainability initiatives from the "ceilings" imposed by existing environmental laws and pending federal climate change legislation. In the decades-long absence of federal action on climate change, local governments – along with the states – positioned themselves at the forefront of climate change and sustainability planning. In fact, state and local actions account for most of the nation's greenhouse gas reduction efforts to date. Yet, front-running localities are being limited by a preemption doctrine that fails to account for both the motives behind their …

Adaptation To The Health Consequences Of Climate Change As A Potential Influence On Public Health Law And Policy: From Preparedness To Resilience, Lindsay F. Wiley

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Because the health effects of climate change are likely to be significant and far-reaching, a key component of climate change adaptation will be our public health infrastructure. Perhaps counter-intuitively, recent emphasis in public health law on preparedness for extraordinary events may be to the detriment of our ability to cope with the health impacts of climate change. While existing emergency preparedness law will necessarily be an important backdrop for health-focused climate change adaptation efforts (especially with regard to natural disasters and infectious disease outbreaks), the focus on emergency preparedness in recent years does not necessarily situate us well for handling …

Making Self-Regulation More Than Merely Symbolic: The Critical Role Of The Legal Environment, Jodi Short, Michael W. Toffel

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Using data from a sample of U.S. industrial facilities subject to the federal Clean Air Act from 1993 to 2003, this article theorizes and tests the conditions under which organizations’ symbolic commitments to self-regulate are particularly likely to result in improved compliance practices and outcomes. We argue that the legal environment, particularly as it is constructed by the enforcement activities of regulators, significantly influences the likelihood that organizations will effectively implement the self-regulatory commitments they symbolically adopt. We investigate how different enforcement tools can foster or undermine organizations’ normative motivations to self-regulate. We find that organizations are more likely to …

Pursuing Geoengineering For Atmospheric Restoration, James Salzman, Robert B. Jackson

Faculty Scholarship

Geoengineering is fraught with problems, but research on three approaches could lead to the greatest climate benefits with the smallest chance of unintentional environmental harm. The authors propose a model for thinking about geoengineering based on the concept of restoration, suggesting the term “atmospheric restoration.” Under this model geoengineering efforts are prioritized based on three principles: to treat the cause of the disease itself, to reduce the chance of harm, and to prioritize activities with the greatest chance of public acceptance.

Based on these principles, the authors propose three forms of geoengineering that could provide the greatest climate benefits with …

Stepping Stone Or Stumbling Block: Incrementalism And National Climate Change Legislation, Rachel Brewster

Faculty Scholarship

This Article examines the effects of incremental domestic legislation on international negotiations to limit greenhouse gas emissions. Mitigating the effects of climate change is a global public good, which, ultimately, only an international agreement can provide. The common presumption (justified or not) is that national legislation is a step forward to an international agreement. This Article analyzes how national legislation can create a demand for international action but can also preempt or frustrate international efforts. The crucial issue, which has been largely ignored thus far, is how incremental steps at the domestic level alter international negotiations. This paper identifies four …

Saving Lives Or Spreading Fear: The Terroristic Nature Of Eco-Extremism, Kevin R. Grubbs

Animal Law Review

Much debate has surfaced surrounding so-called “eco-terrorism.” Some commentators argue that such activity is not and should not be called terrorism. This Comment analyzes these extremist activities through the lens of federal terrorism laws and argues that, while these activists’ goals are laudable, their methods are often terroristic. Consequently, those activities that go too far are-and should be-classified as terrorism.

Land Use And Water Supply, Susan Kelly, Joanne Hilton

Water Matters!

As New Mexico grows and develops, there is a continuing increase in water demand and the need to provide additional supplies. Recent studies estimate the current population of the State to be about two million people, and the population is expected to grow to approximately 3,400,000 by 2050. Regional water plans project water demands for 16 regions within New Mexico. The total projected new water use associated with population growth—the public water supply and associated commercial sectors, exclusive of agriculture, mining, or other industries—ranges from 280,000 to 380,000 acre-feet per year of new water supply needed in the next 40 …

Fiftieth Anniversary Note: A Devoted Reader's Appreciation Of The Natural Resources Journal, A. Dan Tarlock

Natural Resources Journal

No abstract provided.

Oil Spill Compensation Scheme From An Oil Tanker In Korea : A Case Study On The Hebei Spirit, Uk Kim

World Maritime University Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Ship Recycling In The International Regulatory Regime Of The Marine Environment : Selected Legal And Practical Issues And Implications, Ying Fang

World Maritime University Dissertations

Ship recycling is considered to be a safe and green solution to the disposal of ships reaching the end of their operational lives. It has become an issue of grave concern mainly due to the deteriorating records of work safety and environmental pollution associated with this activity. Therefore, international regulatory measures are needed to effectively control ship recycling activities taking into account the important factors of environmental protection and socio-economic development. The discussion in this dissertation revolves around the co-existence and effectiveness of two regulatory conventions relating to ship recycling, namely, the Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements …

Marine Spatial Planning Is Coming To An Ocean Near You, Robert S. Pomeroy

Wrack Lines

There are too many conflicting uses of the ocean in a time where resources are rapidly dwindling. Marine Spatial Planning is catching on globally, and may soon come to Long Island Sound, but it may be difficult to decide who gets to do what, where.

A Bright Idea From The Black Canyon: Federal Judicial Review Of Reserved Water Right Settlements, Reed D. Benson

Faculty Scholarship

Under the reserved water rights doctrine, lands the federal government has designated for a particular purpose have rights to sufficient water to fulfill that purpose. Reserved water rights are also known as Winters rights after the doctrine's foundational case, in which the United States Supreme Court held that Congress must have intended to reserve sufficient water to irrigate an Indian reservation although the treaty establishing that reservation said nothing about water.

Beautifying The Ugly Step-Sister: Desiging An Effective Cap-And-Trade Program To Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions, Miles Young

BYU Law Review

No abstract provided.

Genetically Modified Insects: Why Do We Need Them And How Will They Be Regulated?, Michael J. Donovan

Journal of Environmental and Sustainability Law

No abstract provided.

Solar Energy Policy In Canada: An Overview Of Recent Legislative And Community-Based Trends Toward A Coherent Renewable Energy Sustainability Framework , Kamaal R. Zaida

Journal of Environmental and Sustainability Law

No abstract provided.