Faced with potentially staggering human and economic costs, governments around the world are beginning to plan and implement adaptive measures designed to stem the effects of climate change. Some of these adaptations will likely benefit certain property owners and communities at the expense of others. For example, seawalls intended to save valuable parcels of land from sea-level rise could wind up forcing seawater onto neighboring parcels that...
Climate Change
Decarbonization is the process of converting our economy from one that runs predominantly on energy derived from fossil fuels to one that runs almost exclusively on clean, carbon-free energy. If pursued on the scale that experts believe necessary to prevent dangerous climate change, the infrastructure changes required to decarbonize the United States will have significant social and cultural implications. States aggressively pursuing decarbonization...
This Note examines the disparate treatment of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the regulatory cost–benefit analysis and the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) review contexts. In Zero Zone, Inc. v. United States Department of Energy, the Seventh Circuit upheld the use of the social cost of carbon (SCC) when agencies consider GHG emissions in their cost–benefit analyses. At the same time, courts have almost uniformly rejected...
Introduction President Donald Trump has quickly marshalled the powers of the presidency to challenge President Barack Obama’s environmental legacy. Facing an increasingly intransigent Congress, the Obama Administration placed significant emphasis on rulemaking and other administrative actions to push its progressive agenda. Whatever the merits of this approach, many of these actions are not safe from […]
Climate change represents, perhaps, the greatest challenge of the twenty-first century. As temperatures and sea levels rise, governments around the world will face massive and unprecedented human displacement that international law currently has no mechanism to address. While estimates vary, the scope of the migration crisis that the world will face in the coming decades is startling. In addition to losing their homes, climate change migrants,...