ELI In the News

A new website, Model Laws for Deep Decarbonization in the United States, was launched on Tuesday to help accelerate a sustainable U.S. transition to net-zero greenhouse gas emissions. It will provide policy makers at the federal, state and local levels with the legal tools needed to transition away from fossil fuels. . . .

Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are the root cause of anthropogenic climate change. In the United States, about 80% of these emissions come from fossil fuel combustion; globally, the figure is about 72%. Most of the rest is from agriculture, deforestation, and other land use changes. Thus, the most important task in reducing climate change is transitioning away from fossil fuels. . . .

The Trump administration’s plans to remove federal oversight from some streams and wetlands will leave those waterways without protection in some of the Bay watershed states, while increasing the regulatory burden on others, officials and conservationists say . . . .

At the midpoint of the Supreme Court's current term, the justices have now heard arguments in some of the biggest environmental cases in years, but decisions in those disputes are still pending. By this summer, the justices will have decided a case that could more clearly establish the scope of the Clean Water Act and a challenge that could more firmly define states' role in federal Superfund cleanups. The court has so far been slow to issue opinions while Chief Justice John Roberts was spending half of his days at impeachment trial proceedings across the street on Capitol Hill. . . .

“I believe if you acknowledge women as primary users of environmental resources, if you draft the policy with women [at] the table, offering you their unique perspective and unique feedback, you’re going to have a more stable policy. A policy that gets implemented,” says Mishkat Al-Moumin, scholar in residence at the Environmental Law Institute, in this week’s Friday Podcast, and second in a series of interviews recorded at the First International Conference on Environmental Peacebuilding. . . .

Diverting food waste feedstocks like fats, oils and grease, food scraps, and food processing residuals to anaerobic digestion at water resource recovery facilities (WRRFs) can provide significant benefits to WRRF finances, as well as to our environment and community well-being; however, WRRFs face a number of hurdles that leave this potential sustainability strategy largely untapped. . . .

You may remember the Keystone XL pipeline from 2015, when a movement galvanized by the growing threat of climate change successfully pushed President Obama to reject the project. But Keystone XL, which would pump some of Canada’s most dangerous oil products over nearly 1,200 miles of US land and Indigenous territories largely for export to other countries, is back: In January, thanks to Trump’s efforts to revive the project, TC Energy, the company behind the major oil delivery system, said that it would begin preparing for construction in Montana, South Dakota, and Nebraska as soon as this month. . . .

Diverting food waste feedstocks like fats, oils and grease, food scraps, and food processing residuals to anaerobic digestion at water resource recovery facilities (WRRFs) can provide significant benefits to WRRF finances, as well as to the environment and community, according to a recent report from the Water Research Foundation and the Environmental Law Institute. . . .

The Trump administration has fired the latest salvo in its never-ending assault on environmental safeguards: a proposal from the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) to overhaul its regulations governing federal agency compliance with the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA).  . . .

While U.S. courts continue to grapple with a burgeoning body of climate litigation, attorneys for the nation's top law firms are turning to legal advocacy to help address the consequences of a warming planet. The American Bar Association last summer adopted a resolution enshrining goals for legal practitioners to use their resources and expertise to bolster clean energy projects and support emissions reductions (Climatewire, Aug. 14, 2019). Attorneys across the country have been taking up the mantle. . . .