Conservation Actions for Climate Resilience: Bureau of Land Management Accepting Comments on Proposed Rule
Escalante National Monument
Wednesday, May 17, 2023

On April 3, 2023, the Department of Interior’s Bureau of Land Management (BLM) proposed regulations that would update how the agency approaches public land management “by prioritizing the health and resilience of ecosystems across those lands.” The updates are important, and have the potential for significant impact, because BLM manages nearly 10% of the United States, or almost 250 million acres.

Water, Water, Everywhere?
sea level rise
C. Scott Fulton
Wednesday, April 5, 2023

One of my roles as ELI’s International Envoy is serving on the Steering Committee of the new Climate Crisis Commission established by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN). For those of you unfamiliar with the IUCN, it is a fairly unique international NGO with an extensive interdisciplinary and cross-sectoral membership base that includes governments, other NGOs, practitioners, academics, and the like.

A Down Payment on Climate Change
Capitol Hill
Jordan Diamond
Wednesday, December 14, 2022

When I last sat down to write this column, the Supreme Court had just issued its 6-3 decision in West Virginia v. EPA. As I said at the time, it was disheartening, and many in the environmental law field were assessing how to bounce back from its potential effects limiting agency action. Fast-forward two months, and while the concerns raised by that case aren’t gone, we’ve spun in the other direction.

Counting Sheep
sheep for hire_by Akielly Hu
Akielly Hu
Wednesday, December 21, 2022

A longstanding problem for solar farms has a surprisingly cute solution. “Sheep are the solar industry’s lawn mowers of choice,” writes Amrith Ramkumar in the Wall Street Journal. Farmers maintaining thousands of acres of panels need to contend with tall grasses, which, unabated, can obstruct sunlight. Enter the star of nursery rhymes and an unexpected hero of renewables. Hard-working flocks are now generating millions of dollars in annual revenue by helping to chomp on pesky weeds.

Critical Minerals and Fast-Tracking the Clean Energy Transition
Electric vehicle
Akielly Hu
Wednesday, November 16, 2022

Clean energy technologies require a variety of minerals of varying degrees of scarcity. As a result, decarbonizing the economy will entail expansion of mineral production—not only through imaginative reuse and recycling, but also through new mines and the permits required to build those mines. Some have called for a loosening of environmental standards to address this growing need.

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