Vibrant Environment

Climate Change And Sustainability


All | Biodiversity | Climate Change and Sustainability | Environmental Justice | Governance and Rule of Law | Land Use and Natural Resources | Oceans and Coasts | Pollution Control

All blog posts are the opinion of its author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of ELI, the organization, or its members.

For inquiries concerning ELI’s Vibrant Environment blog, please contact the Blog Editor at blogeditor@eli.org.


By Piper Conway

As our global energy demand continues to rise, our dependence on renewable energy sources will inevitably increase as well. The offshore wind industry is a fairly new sector within the energy space. Although the United States is already one of the world’s largest onshore wind energy markets, there remains a substantial amount of growth potential off of our shores.

Florida Gulf Coast shoreline
The Gulf Coast is no stranger to disaster. Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the BP oil spill in 2010, Hurricane Harvey in 2017 have all left their mark on communities from Florida to Texas. The COVID-19 pandemic adds another layer of complexity to Gulf Coast resiliency.
U.S. Supreme Court Building
By C. Scott Fulton

It’s amazing how quickly humanity’s concern can shift when circumstanc­es demand it, and the coronavirus pandemic has riveted our attention. Even today, Earth Day, talking about anything else risks seeming detached or indifferent to the enormous suffering, disruption, and dislocation that the COVID-19 vi­rus has unleashed on the world. But I need to alert you to a new ELI report analyzing the other major challenge that will be waiting for us on the other side of our current crisis, one that, like the pandemic, is deeply informed by science.

Air pollution in Chinese city
By Zhuoshi Liu, By Cynthia R. Harris, By Akielly Hu

Nearly four billion people worldwide are under government mandates to socially distance themselves from one another in order to “flatten the curve” of COVID-19. Non-essential workers are hunkering down at home, bringing the daily commute and air travel to a virtual halt. The resulting decline in air pollution is stunning, visible even in satellite images.

cows grazing in a field
By Micah Bradley, By Linda Breggin

In “Animal Agriculture Liability for Climatic Nuisance: A Path Forward for Climate Change Litigation?,” Prof. Daniel E. Walters lays out a new path for climate litigation: environmental litigators should bring federal public nuisance suits to remedy environmental harms caused by animal agriculture.

1970s
By Stephen R. Dujack

It is now half a century since the first Earth Day. Not only did I help run our school’s “teach in” in 1970, it is also 50 years since my entrance into environmental journalism. A first-person history may help to affirm the importance of the environmental protections that soon followed, as well as of a robust student press to push today’s issues.

By Mark Rokoff, By John Priebe, By Dave Cox

 

“Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.”—William Bruce Cameron

“Better three hours too soon than a minute too late.”—William Shakespeare

climate protest
By Stephen R. Dujack

The Yale-Harvard football contest the weekend before Thanksgiving each autumn is known as “The Game” by Elis and Cantabridgians. One can always sight the rich and famous among the tens of thousands of alumni in attendance. This year’s season-ender was disrupted by a huge climate change protest that made national news. It began when a group of students poured onto the field and began to shout, “Okay, boomer.” Thousands more joined them in impromptu fashion. The video went viral.

Wall Street
By ELR Staff

Savvy investors are increasingly considering climate-related information in their decisionmaking. How companies model future costs of climate policies, the extent to which they are prepared to adjust to the physical impacts of climate change, and how climate projections impact corporate planning are just some of the information investors are interested in knowing. This argues for considering more climate-related information legally “material” under existing U.S.

By Dave Rejeski

After almost getting hit by an Amazon Prime truck as I wandered around Greenwich Village, I started to look around at what was piling up in the foyers of posh condos and on the steps of the venerable brownstones. Maybe lying under these mountains of cardboard was a first edition of The Call of the Wild off eBay, but I doubted it.