Vibrant Environment

In a landmark decision issued June 20, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court confirmed that Pennsylvania’s Environmental Rights Amendment, adopted in 1971, creates a “public trust” in Commonwealth resources as the “common property of all the people including generations yet to come.”

Sustainable investment firms, state pension plans, and advocacy groups are influencing businesses’ sustainability practices through a variety of shareholder engagement approaches.  A key tool is the shareholder resolution – a proposal put forth by a shareholder or group of shareholders – that is included in a proxy statement and subject to a vote of the corporation’s shareholders.   

On May 30, 2017, in two separate opinions, a Montana district court overturned a U.S. Forest Service approval of a mine proposal submitted by Hecla Mining Company. In the first case, the court held that the approval violated the Clean Water Act (CWA), National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), and National Forest Management Act (NFMA).

For months, Volkswagen has been reeling from an emissions manipulation scandal affecting over one-half million U.S. vehicles and costing the company more than $20 billion in reparations. The financial and reputational damage has now invaded the VW supply chain, with Bosch, the company who developed the emissions control programs for VW, agreeing to pay customers over $300 million in damages. Who is next? Probably Fiat/Chrysler and Daimler, both under investigation for evading diesel emissions rules.

Federal regulations undergo a lot of review during their development and drafting by federal agencies: input from government attorneys and economists, rounds of public comments under the Administrative Procedure Act, review by the Small Business Administration, and—often most significantly—review by the regulatory gatekeepers housed at the Office of Management and Budget’s (OMB’s) Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA).

“Sustainability” was introduced in environmental policy discourse 30 years ago, when the World Commission on Environment and Development published Our Common Future, charting a path for development that “meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” But as Scott Fulton, David Clarke, and María Amparo Albán write in the June issue of

In my last blog, I wrote about ACERGA’s lawsuit against the government of Spain over the current criteria for fisheries quota distribution. In addition to the lawsuit, in late March 2017, ACERGA, in cooperation with the Universidade da Coruña (UDC) Law School, organized a conference to bring together government representatives, fishers, and fishing policy experts to discuss the problems with and propose solutions to the current quota distribution system and purse-seine fishing.

In the midst of gigantic political divide, on May 4, 2017, the Senate passed a continuing resolution that will finance the government through September 2017. The details of the resolution saw many environmentalists cheer as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) saw a modest cut to its budget to the tune of $80 million, a 1% cut overall. This victory came on the heels of a threatened cut of 31% in the president’s proposed budget.

Even prior to recent events, the topic of "presidential power" had been trending. There's now an entire law school course devoted to the Trump Administration's first 100 days; several of us at ELI recently assessed the viability of current and proposed executive branch actions in the regulatory arena; and federal court cases on the travel ban and on defunding sanctuary cities are a reminder that executive orders can be swiftly reviewed where they test constitutional or statutory limits.

IBM today is reaffirming its support for the Paris Climate Agreement and stating clearly how we will continue our decades-long work to lower greenhouse gas emissions. Our call for an international agreement on this issue is more than a decade old, and we first voiced our support for the Paris Agreement in 2015 when it was negotiated.