Climate Law Blog

By The Sabin Center for Climate Change Law The onslaught of Hurricane Harvey has provoked a widespread reckoning with the foreseeability of such extreme events in the age of climate change, and with how institutionalized shortfalls in preparedness have contributed to the unfolding disaster. Flooding from Harvey’s tremendous rainfall has led to direct impacts on […]

On August 21, the federal District Court for the District of Columbia upheld the decision by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to withhold NOAA climate scientists’ research documents from release to the conservative group Judicial Watch. Judicial Watch sought to use the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) – which allows citizens to request […]

By Jessica Wentz This week, federal courts issued decisions on two cases involving questions pertaining to the scope of environmental review for fossil fuel production and transportation projects. Among other things, these cases examined the extent to which agencies had complied with obligations under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) to examine the indirect and […]

By Michael B. Gerrard Donald Trump’s operating principles as relates to environmental regulation are: Regulations kill jobs; they are all costs, no benefits; we should do away with as many as we can. The U.S. should strive for “energy dominance” in the world, trying to follow the lead of those two countries he admires so […]

Columbia Law School’s Sabin Center for Climate Change Law was honored on August 13 by the American Bar Association (ABA) this weekend with the Distinguished Achievement in Environmental Law and Policy Award in recognition of its outstanding contributions to environmental protection and sustainable development efforts in the United States. The award was presented by the […]

Jessica Wentz and Susan Biniaz Earlier this week, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals vacated a 2015 EPA rulemaking aimed at phasing out the use of hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), a potent class of greenhouse gas emissions which were introduced as a substitute for ozone-depleting chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HCFCs) in the 1990s (Mexchem Fluor, Inc. v. […]

Each month, Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer LLP (APKS) and the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law collect and summarize developments in climate-related litigation, which we also add to our U.S. and non-U.S. climate litigation charts.  If you know of any cases we have missed, please email us at columbiaclimate at gmail dot com. In June, the Sabin Center, in […]

By Susan Biniaz (Susan Biniaz is a former Deputy Legal Adviser at the U.S. Department of State, as well as the Department’s lead climate lawyer from 1989 through early 2017. She is currently a Senior Fellow at the UN Foundation and on the adjunct faculty at Columbia and Yale Law Schools.) On August 4th, the […]

By Nadra Rahman and Jessica Wentz Federal climate regulations are currently under attack, in part due to the perception that these regulations will impose excessive costs on regulated industries and society as a whole. But according to federal projections, the benefits of these regulations would significantly outweigh the costs. In a new paper, we added […]