Vibrant Environment

Electricity generation, one of the leading sources of greenhouse gas emissions, rarely accounts for the social cost of damages caused by carbon dioxide emissions. Embedding these costs into market rates is one way to address the pressing need for decarbonization. In this year’s Environmental Law and Policy Annual Review (ELPAR), a special issue of The Environmental Law Reporter, authors Bethany Davis Noll and Burcin Unel argue that addressing the price of emissions falls within the authority of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). The authors examine how imposing a cost on carbon aligns with FERC’s main goal of ensuring just and reasonable rates, and they explore opportunities and limits for FERC’s authority.

Though the remediation of Superfund and brownfield sites protects the environment by removing harmful contaminants, the cleanup process itself can produce a significant environmental footprint. Remediation often involves technologies and heavy-duty construction equipment that is powered by fossil fuels and emits air pollution. How can we reduce the environmental footprint of the remediation process at these contaminated sites?

In Part One of this blog, I discussed the negative impacts of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) and the lack of regulation in the United States as compared to the European Union (EU). This second part proposes three policy options for the U.S. government to consider: (1) regulating the production of PFAS; (2) limiting the ingestion of PFAS through drinking water; and (3) providing funding for federal cleanup of PFAS-contaminated sites.

We have the solutions we need to build an equitable and just climate resilient future. Over the past year, coalitions of frontline environmental groups, labor organizations, tribal groups, and other mission-driven organizations in the United States have developed and published comprehensive policy platforms to address the climate crisis. These platforms outline federal, local, and state policy for building resilience and transitioning to renewable and regenerative economies.

In recent years, scholars, journalists, and activists have drawn attention to the sexist, racist, classist, and homophobic attitudes that surround the U.S. environmental movement. Though the movement’s problematic aspects may come as a surprise to some, the exclusionary nature of mainstream contemporary environmentalism is no accident. The crusade to address the nation’s environmental issues was designed this way from the outset.

Whether or not you follow chemical regulations, you’ve probably heard of PFAS, per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, a class of over 4,700 synthetic compounds. While many have discussed the risks of PFAS for human health, regulation is lacking in the United States to limit its use. So, what are the risks posed by PFAS and what policy measures might prove effective in mitigating their potential harm? This two-part blog will explore the answers to these questions.

When I was a philosophy student at Princeton in the 1970s, our department was rated number one nationally because of its stars in analytic theory. But the hottest department was Harvard’s, where two professors who were office neighbors held opposing viewpoints on social philosophy and wrote bestsellers — an anomaly for such scholarly works.

Public meetings are a fundamental component of many policymaking and planning processes, including the natural resource damage assessment (NRDA) process that aims to restore the Gulf of Mexico ecosystem and the permitting and environmental review procedures for individual projects.

Over the past several years, quiet initiatives by private actors to cut carbon emissions, adopt climate-smart agriculture practices, and increase renewable energy have grown in scope and ambition. These private efforts are not mandated by public law, yet collectively they take on the attributes and functions of a governance system that could be vital to societal decarbonization. But according to ELI Visiting Scholar Lou Leonard, this system “is at a delicate moment, perhaps having flown too far, too fast.

I have been deposed dozens of times over the course of my career as an expert in forensic history and environmental cost analysis. Due to COVID-19, however, I recently sat for my first remote deposition wherein all parties (myself, defending attorney, deposing attorney, court reporter, and observers) were in different locations across the country and were connected to the deposition using a digital platform.