Environmental Law Commons^™

Innovative Financing For Renewable Energy, Richard L. Ottinger, John Bowie

Pace Environmental Law Review

This paper discusses successful innovative methods for financing the high initial equipment costs of many renewable energy resources, with case studies of their application. Financial instruments for renewable energy installations are frequently dependent on physical and economic infrastructure. In response to this fundamental interconnectedness between infrastructure, economy, and financial instruments, this paper follows a rough structure of financing methods used in: Areas unserved by an electricity grid; Areas of modest means served by limited transmission interconnections; and Areas with developed regional or national grid connectedness.

Renewables have many benefits, but they also face challenges as they enter the existing market …

Improving The Legal Implementation Mechanisms For A Carbon Tax In China, Haifeng Deng

Pace Environmental Law Review

Within the framework of existing Chinese environmental laws, carbon taxation faces four main challenges: the contradiction of existing taxes, conflict with the carbon emissions trading system, necessary adjustments to the organizational structure of tax collection and management, and coordination with international trade rules. Implementing a carbon tax is a complete and systematic process containing three stages: introduction, collection, and impacts assessment. In order to address these problems, it is necessary to construct legal implementation mechanisms for carbon taxation in China. The legal mechanisms of implementing a carbon tax include a series of coordination and safeguard measures aimed at optimizing the …

Alternative Funding For An Equitable Park System In New York City And State, Christopher Rizzo

Pace Environmental Law Review

Private efforts have successfully transformed a select few parks, which has created allegations of park inequity at a time when many neighborhood parks are overgrown and understaffed. Public-private partnerships reflect a national debate about the proper role of the private sector in maintaining parks, highways, bridges, and other essential civic infrastructure. But for most neighborhood parks the debate is irrelevant. They completely lack access to either adequate public funding or private revenue. One-time infusions of public capital dollars into the neediest parks cannot solve the ongoing operation and maintenance problem.

This paper identifies an array of alternative revenue strategies to …

Municipal Wildfire Management In California: A Local Response To Global Climate Change, Sameer Ponkshe

Pace Environmental Law Review

This Note will examine the wildfire issue in California within the context of municipal government. Part II-A will present a concise look at the current state of affairs regarding climate change, which demonstrates that because little has changed on the international level regarding emissions reductions, the responsibility of protecting people from the catastrophes associated with climate change will fall to lower levels of government. Part II-B will then discuss how wildfire activity is affected by climate change, with specific attention to how the western U.S. has been affected. Part III of this Note focuses on actions of several different municipalities …

How To Avoid Constitutional Challenges To State Based Climate Change Initiatives: A Case Study Of Rocky Mountain Farmers Union V. Corey And New York State Programs, Lauren Baron

Pace Environmental Law Review

Considering the decision in Rocky Mtn. v. Corey and the EPA's actions in accordance with the President's Plan, this comment will outline best practices states can use in creating climate initiatives based on the challenges California faced in Rocky Mtn. v. Corey. Part II of this comment will analyze the reasoning in Rocky Mtn. v. Corey. Although certiorari was denied in the case, Part II will analyze recent Supreme Court dormant Commerce Clause jurisprudence to determine which cases are relevant to consider when analyzing a dormant Commerce Clause challenge to state based climate initiatives. Part III will discuss the current …

The Declaration Of Interdependence: A New Declaration To Overthrow The Tyranny Of Small Decisions And Achieve Sustainability, Phillip M. Kannan

Pace Environmental Law Review

Two declarations are the foundation of modern international environmental law and policy: the Stockholm Declaration on the Human Environment and the Rio Declaration on the Environment and Development. Both of these declarations include well-established principles of international environmental law and policy such as state responsibility, territorial sovereignty, the necessity of ecosystem protection, and the importance of international cooperation. In addition, they both embrace revolutionary ideas. For example, the Stockholm Declaration held out the possibility of a human right to a healthy environment and suggested the need to integrate economic development and social development with environmental protection, which is the seed …

Ending The Tyranny Of The Status Quo: Building 21st Century Environmental Law, Scott Schang, Leslie Carothers, Jay Austin

Pace Environmental Law Review

Over the past few years, the Environmental Law Institute (ELI or the Institute) has worked to assess the notable successes and current challenges of United States environmental law to inform a new agenda for the twenty-first century. Founded in 1969, at the beginning of modern environmental law, the Institute has been both participant and analyst of an impressive record of major accomplishments in pollution reduction, greater protection of public health, and more intelligent conservation and management of natural resources, in both the public and the private sector. Like the majority of environmental lawyers and policy professionals examining today's challenges, we …

Environmental Law's Heartland And Frontiers, Todd S. Aagaard

Pace Environmental Law Review

This short paper offers three propositions to help maintain the traditional core of environmental law while also expanding environmental concerns into the frontiers of the field: 1. Environmental law in the heartland and environmental law at the frontiers of the field differ in important ways. 2. The distinctive features of the heartland and frontiers provide important functional benefits for the adaptive development of environmental law in each respective area. 3. Maintaining a distinctive heartland and frontiers of environmental law creates a dialectic relationship between the two that includes tension but also, if properly managed, potential synergies.

The locus of innovation …

The Safe Drinking Water / Food Law Nexus, Margot J. Pollans

Pace Environmental Law Review

At 2 AM on August 2, 2014, the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency issued the following warning to the citizens of Toledo: “Do Not Drink.” The Ohio City's tap water was contaminated with microcystin, a toxin that can cause diarrhea, vomiting, and abnormal liver function. The source was an algal bloom in Lake Erie resulting from high levels of agricultural fertilizers and animal waste. For three days, Toledo residents drank only bottled water.

This is just one of many similar examples of agricultural contamination of urban drinking water supplies. Creating a physical connection between urban and rural communities, this pollution highlights …

California Climate Law---Model Or Object Lesson?, Daniel A. Farber

Pace Environmental Law Review

In the invitation to this Symposium on Reconceptualizing the Future of Environmental Law, the organizers explained that the Symposium “focuses on the continued expansion of environmental law into distinct areas of the law, requiring an increasingly multidisciplinary approach beyond that of traditional federal regulation.” In short, the question posed is about the future proliferation of environmental measures outside the previous domains of federal environmental statutes.

At the risk of being guilty of local parochialism, I would like to discuss how the future described by the organizers has already arrived in California--both in the sense that a great deal is happening …

Environmental Law In Austerity, James Salzman, J.B. Ruhl, Jonathan Remy Nash

Pace Environmental Law Review

The EPA has always had enemies. Vigorously denouncing EPA's activities as “overzealous,” “job killing,” or a “regulatory train wreck” has become commonplace on the campaign trail and from special interest groups covered by the agency's reach. Perhaps this is to be expected, since EPA's regulations influence a remarkably wide range of activities throughout the country. The agency, though, has been subject to far more than just harsh rhetoric.

Over the past three decades, there have been concerted efforts in Congress to restrain the EPA both by legislation and, less directly, by reducing its resources. Crippling amendments have largely failed but …

Distributed, Nega-, And Reclaimed: Setting Expectations In The "New" Resource Base, Michael Pappas

Pace Environmental Law Review

At this point in time, environmental law faces the task of drawing a budget for living within our resource means, and this budget will be tightly stretched. It must provide energy, water, food, and materials to a growing population; it must cope with the depletion of formerly abundant resources; and it must act both to mitigate climate impacts and adapt to the changes already manifesting. To do this, the budgeting must consider resources and uses that have previously been considered insignificant and that have not received attention in terms of ownership, allocation, or governance. Thus, the future of environmental law …

Engines Of Environmental Innovation: Reflections On The Role Of States In The U.S. Regulatory System, Alexandra Dapolito Dunn, Chandos Culleen

Pace Environmental Law Review

This article focuses on the role that states play in environmental regulation. Specifically, this article offers examples of the central part in the evolution of United States environmental regulation states played in the past, continue to play today, and will play in the future. First, this article explores the history of state environmental regulation, demonstrating that despite a lack of resources, states were actively engaged in environmental regulation before the advent of the modern era of federal environmental regulation in the 1970s. This article relates not only the regulatory efforts of states, but also the practical benefits of state regulation. …

Bridging The North-South Divide: International Environmental Law In The Anthropocene, Carmen G. Gonzalez

Pace Environmental Law Review

This article calls for a fundamental reorientation of international environmental law to bridge the North-South divide and respond to the ecological crises of the Anthropocene. Such a reconceptualization of international environmental law must be normatively grounded in respect for nature and in the quest for environmental justice within, as well as between, countries.

International environmental law must directly challenge the relentless drive toward economic expansion and unbridled exploitation of people and nature rather than merely attempt to mitigate its excesses. An essential step toward such a reconceptualization is to examine the ways in which international law has historically engaged with …

Reconceptualizing The Future Of Environmental Law: The Role Of Private Climate Governance, Michael P. Vandenbergh

Pace Environmental Law Review

The title of this Symposium, Reconceptualizing the Future of Environmental Law, accurately captures the challenge facing environmental law scholars and policymakers in 2015. The success of environmental law in the future will not arise from doubling down on the approaches developed over the last 50 years. Instead, it will arise from our willingness to learn from the past without being bound by the conceptual frameworks that dominated the early development of the field.

In particular, a successful future for environmental law is more likely to emerge if we acknowledge that the environmental problems, policy plasticity, and regulatory institutions that shaped …

Pace Environmental Law Review 2015 Symposium: Reconceptualizing The Future Of Environmental Law, Cayleigh S. Eckhardt

Pace Environmental Law Review

Pace Environmental Law Review's 2015 Symposium, entitled Reconceptualizing the Future of Environmental Law, can be traced back to over a year ago when a few Pace Environmental Law faculty members approached me and Katie Hatt, the Managing Editor of the law review, with an idea.1 No, not an idea, rather a question. They simply asked us, “what do you think the future holds for environmental law?” This question transformed into an extensive conversation about the past, the present, and the future of environmental law.

International Legal Protection For Climate Refugees: Where Lies The Haven For The Maldivian People?, Simran Dolla

Student Works

Climate change and sea level rise are not just mere words for the Maldivian people; they are a grim reality that is consuming their nation. Sea level rise presents one of the gravest dangers for the Maldives because of its already low-lying characteristics. As the levels continue to rise, the nation is sinking into extinction. Some 300,000 people of the Maldives are on the brink of losing their homes and becoming climate change refugees. The existing international laws are not only ill-equipped to provide protections or the much-needed relief, they also make no mention of climate change refugees. Therefore, as …

Eyes On Bangladesh's Disappearing Coasts: Proposed Constitutional Protections For Coastal Communities Particularly Vulnerable To Climate Change, Sabrina Persaud

Student Works

Climate change, a phenomenon caused by global warming, has impacted just about every part of the earth. As polar ice caps continue to melt, people across the world are experiencing record-breaking heat waves and warmer winters. These erratic weather patterns are just one of the many impacts of climate change. Changes in temperature have altered ecosystems and habitats for terrestrial and marine wildlife, and caused human health to deteriorate. Larger, more industrialized countries are the major contributors to climate change; however, smaller countries, such as Bangladesh, suffer the consequences. This article analyses the negative effects that climate change has had …

Getches-Wilkinson Center Newsletter, Fall 2015, University Of Colorado Boulder. Getches-Wilkinson Center For Natural Resources, Energy, And The Environment

Getches-Wilkinson Center for Natural Resources, Energy, and the Environment Newsletter (2013-)

No abstract provided.

You Gotta Fight For The Right To Vote: Enfranchising Native American Voters, Jeanette Wolfley

Faculty Scholarship

Five decades ago, the Congress passed the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Since its passage, the Voting Right Act has created the opportunity to vote for many racial and language minorities across the country, and has survived many challenges until 2013. The U.S. Supreme Court issued two decisions involving voting rights in its 2012-2013 term. On June 25, 2013, in Shelby County v. Holder, a divided Supreme Court struck down Section 4 - a key provision of the 1965 Voting Right Act (VRA) - as unconstitutional. On June 17, 2013, one week before the Shelby County decision, the Court decided …