Environmental Law Commons^™

See You In Court: Around The World In Eight Climate Change Lawsuits, Myanna Dellinger

William & Mary Environmental Law and Policy Review

No abstract provided.

“Either Secrecy, Or Legal Monopoly”: Why We Should Choose Fracking Patents, Sarah Spencer

William & Mary Environmental Law and Policy Review

No abstract provided.

Cleaner, Greener, Healthier: A Prescription For Stronger Canadian Environmental Laws And Policies By David R. Boyd, Alex D. Ketchum

The Goose

Review of David R. Boyd's Cleaner, Greener, Healthier: A Prescription for Stronger Canadian Environmental Laws and Policies.

Montana Environmental Information Center V. U.S. Office Of Surface Mining, Lowell J. Chandler

Public Land & Resources Law Review

In MEIC v. U.S. Office of Surface Mining, the cost of coal mining’s climate impacts and the agency’s NEPA review obligations are at issue. The United States District Court for the District of Montana found that the Office of Surface Mining and Enforcement failed to adequately consider the need for an EIS and to take a hard look at the indirect, cumulative, and foreseeable impacts of a proposed coal mine expansion in central Montana. In its NEPA analysis, the court concluded that if the benefits of a carbon-intensive project are quantified, then the costs to the climate should be …

Covariant Risk And Nutrient Credit Training, Brian Sawers

Maryland Law Review Online

Every summer, a dead zone is created in the Chesapeake Bay. The dead zone is created by too much of a good thing: nutrients, especially nitrogen and phosphorus. The largest source of excess nutrients in the Chesapeake is agriculture; manure and artificial fertilizers are washed into streams that eventually reach the bay. In the bay, nitrogen and phosphorus create an algae bloom, which consumes all the dissolved oxygen. Some fish escape, but other creatures expire in this dead sea within the Chesapeake Bay.

To reduce the excess nutrients reaching the bay, several states are experimenting with nutrient credit trading. A …

Resourcing Green Technologies Through Smart Mineral Enterprise Development: A Case Analysis Of Cobalt, Saleem Ali, Perrine Toledano, Nicolas Maennling, Nathaniel Hoffman, Lola Aganga

Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment Staff Publications

Achieving the goals of the Paris Agreement requires the world to adopt ‘green technologies’ such as renewable energies and electric transportation at an unprecedented scale. While many countries have implemented policies to spur the adoption of such technologies, a lack of focus has been placed on the sourcing of minerals that are required as inputs. As a result, there is likely to be a significant deficit that may constrain the adoption of green technologies.

In this report, we argue that a neglected area in addressing the mineral scarcity challenge is the private sector’s current trajectory for geological mineral exploration and …

The Flip Side Of Michigan V. Epa: Are Cumulative Impacts Centrally Relevant?, Sanne H. Knudsen

Utah Law Review

This Article explores the flipside of Michigan - v. EPA - where the Court’s logic can just as well support agencies in their public health and environmental protection efforts. In particular, taking Michigan as a blueprint, this Article argues that cumulative impacts are centrally relevant to environmental regulation and—like cost—deserve a systemic and meaningful role in agency decisionmaking, including in the threshold decision of when to regulate. In doing so, this Article serves as a counterbalance to the weight of cost benefit rhetoric that would reduce environmental law off to a line item in a strained budget.

Beyond The Pipeline Wars: Reforming Environmental Assessment Of Energy Transport Infrastructure, James W. Coleman

Utah Law Review

In recent years, the role of transport infrastructure in energy markets has become a flashpoint for legal conflict. On one hand, the world is experiencing an unprecedented buildout of all kinds of energy transport: oil and gas pipelines, liquefied natural gas projects, power transmission, and port facilities for coal and oil. On the other hand, environmental advocates have increasingly insisted that pipelines and other transport projects should not be built if they would encourage fossil fuel production in markets “upstream” and fossil fuel consumption in markets “downstream” of these projects.

Governments have struggled with how to respond. President Obama famously …

Backyard Beekeeping In The Beehive State: Salt Lake City’S Beekeeping Regulations, Nuisance Concerns, And The Legal Status Of Honey Bees, Robert T. Moriarty

Utah Law Review

Recognizing the increasing popularity of urban beekeeping and the vital role that bees play in the ecosystem, the Salt Lake City Council has acted to allow keeping bees within city limits. To ensure that bees would not present a significant nuisance, the council implemented a simple set of guidelines to regulate the practice. While the Ordinance is an excellent first step that effectively addresses most of the sources of nuisance associated with honey bees, it would be wise to reassess its provisions now that it has been in place for nearly eight years. Perhaps a survey of complaints about urban …

Guest Species: Rethinking Our Approach To Biodiversity In The Anthropocene, Karrigan Börk

Utah Law Review

Western environmental law rests on an outdated philosophy that only fully “natural” places, species, and ecosystems should receive full protection, while human influenced places, species, and ecosystems are lesser habitats not worthy of full-throated protection. As we move into the Anthropocene—a dawning geologic age marked by the emergence of humanity as the dominant force shaping the natural world—this simplistic view loses its power to guide our decisionmaking. In a world where more than 75% of ice free land shows evidence of human alteration, if anthropogenic species, places, or ecosystems are not worth protecting, then there simply is not enough left …

Ciudades Y La Lucha Contra El Cambio Climático: Experiencias De Municipios Estadounidenses [Cities And Climate Change: Experiences From U.S. Municipalities], Luis Inaraja Vera

Law Faculty Scholarship

Spanish Abstract: El ejecutivo estadounidense elegido a finales de 2016 ha dejado claro que la lucha contra el cambio climático no se encuentra entre sus prioridades. En parte como consecuencia de ello, varias ciudades americanas han acelerado sus políticas climáticas, algunas de las cuales vienen implementándose ya desde hace años. La experiencia americana sugie170 QDL46 · Cuadernos de Derecho Local Fundación Democracia y Gobierno Local re que una de las claves para la reducción de gases de efecto invernadero a nivel municipal pasa por abordar el problema de la ineficiencia energética de edificios existentes, especialmente en ciudades con un elevado …

Cholera And Climate Change: Pursuing Public Health Adaptation Strategies In The Face Of Scientific Debate, Robin Kundis Craig

Utah Law Faculty Scholarship

Climate change will affect the prevalence, distribution, and lethality of many diseases, from mosquito-borne diseases like malaria and dengue fever to directly infectious diseases like influenza to water-borne diseases like cholera and cryptosporidia. This Article focuses on one of the current scientific debates surrounding cholera and the implications of that debate for public health-related climate change adaptation strategies.

Since the 1970s, Rita Colwell and her co-researchers have been arguing a local reservoir hypothesis for cholera, emphasizing that river, estuarine, and coastal waters often contain more dormant forms of cholera attached to copepods, a form of zooplankton. Under this hypothesis, climatically …

Assessing The Effectiveness Of The Eco-Patent Commons: A Post-Mortem Analysis, Jorge L. Contreras, Bronwyn H. Hall, Christian Helmers

Utah Law Faculty Scholarship

The authors revisit the effect of the “Eco-Patent Commons” (EcoPC) on the diffusion of patented environmentally friendly technologies following its discontinuation in 2016. Established in January 2008 by several large multinational companies, the not-for-profit initiative provided royalty-free access to 248 patents covering 94 “green” inventions. In previous work, Bronwyn Hall and Christian Helmers (2013) suggested that the patents pledged to the commons had the potential to encourage the diffusion of valuable environmentally friendly technologies. The updated results in this paper now show that the commons did not increase the diffusion of pledged inventions, and that the EcoPC suffered from a …

Dynamic Relationships Between Social Norms And Pro-Environmental Behavior: Evidence From Household Recycling, W. Kip Viscusi, Joel Huber, Jason Bell

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Social norms are strongly associated with pro-environmental behaviors, but the evolution and dynamic effects of norms are less well understood. This article builds on the distinction of norms being descriptive, characterizing what people actually do, or injunctive, characterizing what people should do. It identifies four categories of norms with the further distinction of whether the norms arise from the personal beliefs and actions or from the behaviors and judgments of others. The analysis uses five years of longitudinal US data that track household recycling and controls for household characteristics as well as differences in state recycling laws. The results extend …

Prospective Grandfathering: Anticipating The Energy Transition Problem, Christopher Serkin, Michael P. Vandenbergh

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Legal change has the potential to disrupt settled expectations and property rights. The Takings Clause provides protection from the most significant costs by requiring compensation following a change in the law, but threats of takings claims can discourage policymakers from adopting sound laws and policies. If specific legal changes can be anticipated far enough in advance, are there tactics available to reduce the risk of takings claims and blunt their political force in the future? We identify innovative tools that preserve regulatory flexibility so that legal changes can avoid takings liability, and we do so specifically in the context of …

Complicated-But Not Too Complicated: The Sunset Of E.U. Law In The U.K. After Brexit, Maimon Schwarzschild

Cardozo Law Review

The article examines the complexities of Brexit, focusing on the integration of EU law into UK law and the challenges of disentangling the two legal systems post-Brexit. It explores key areas such as free movement, environmental law, and the forms of EU law, highlighting the interconnectedness of EU and UK legal frameworks. The author suggests a "sunset clause" approach to manage the transition, allowing EU laws to expire unless explicitly retained, to align with the UK's newfound independence and regulatory autonomy.

V.2 No.1

Conservation Law Center Newsletter

No abstract provided.

Cultivating A Culture Of Environmental And Natural Resources Collaboration In Utah, Danya Rumore

Environmental Dispute Resolution Program

Unhealthy air quality. Growing demands for water in an arid state. Conflicts over public lands and how those lands should be managed. These are just a few environmental and natural resources challenges here in Utah that we hear “keep people up at night.” Such challenges are indeed daunting, and they will not be easily solved. However, in every challenge there is an opportunity. And when it comes to environmental and natural resources challenges, there is a powerful opportunity for people to work together to find mutually beneficial solutions that are, as consensus building guru Larry Susskind puts it, “fair, efficient, …

From Little Acorns, Nicholas A. Robinson

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

Inaugurating Writing Nature: A Seasonal Program of Readings of Nature Writings, under the shared auspices of the Teatown Lake Reservation and the Hudson Valley Writers Center. Presented at the Hudson Valley Writers Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York.

Wyoming V. Zinke, Jaclyn Van Natta

Public Land & Resources Law Review

In Wyoming v. Zinke, the Bureau of Land Management attempted to update a regulation governing hydraulic fracturing from the 1980s, but oil and gas industry companies opposed, and brought suit. The district court held in favor of the industry petitioners, and the Bureau of Land Management and citizen group intervenors appealed. In the wake of appeal, Donald J. Trump became President of the United States. The administration change caused the Bureau of Land Management to alter its position and align with the new administration. Secretary of the Interior, Ryan Zinke, via executive order, began rescinding the new fracking regulation, …