Climate Law Blog

The Sabin Center has recently posted a working paper, Downstream and Upstream Greenhouse Gas Emissions: The Proper Scope of NEPA Review.  The paper was co-authored by Executive Director Michael Burger and Associate Director and Fellow Jessica Wentz and will be published in the Fall 2016 edition of the Harvard Environmental Law Review. The paper explores […]

Jessica Wentz Associate Director and Fellow Yesterday, the Bureau of Ocean and Energy Management (BOEM) released the Draft Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (DPEIS) for the 2017-2022 Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) Oil and Gas Leasing Program. The DPEIS accounts for the impacts of climate change on program activities. It does not, however, contain any discussion of […]

Each month, Arnold & Porter 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. Here are the additions to the litigation charts (Update #83). FEATURED […]

Last week marked an important shift in executive policy on fossil fuel leasing: the Interior Department announced a moratorium on new leases for coal mined from federal lands, pending a comprehensive reexamination of the decades-old coal leasing program. Interior will prepare a Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (PEIS) to examine how the coal leasing program can […]

Each month, Arnold & Porter 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. Here are the additions to the litigation charts (Update #82). […]

Jessica Wentz Associate Director and Fellow Earlier this month, I visited Savannah, Georgia to talk with concerned citizens about the environmental review process for oil and gas infrastructure in their state. My presentation focused on how the public can use the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) to ensure that agencies evaluate the full scope of […]

Jessica Wentz Associate Director and Postdoctoral Fellow Although it has become more common for agencies in preparing environmental impact statements (EISs) to acknowledge the impacts of climate change on a project and its affected environment, it is still quite rare for agencies to accurately incorporate this knowledge into final decisions about the project design, selection […]

Today, the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law is releasing a set of model protocols for assessing the impacts of climate change on the built environment under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and state equivalents. The protocols are intended for use in environmental reviews of proposed buildings and infrastructure (we plan to initiate a […]

Jessica Wentz Associate Director and Postdoctoral Fellow Earlier this month, the City of Miami submitted comments on the draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) for the proposed expansion of the Turkey Point Nuclear Power Plant, urging the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to reject the project in light of climate-related risks. The City’s chief concerns are that […]

Jennifer M. Klein, Associate Director & Fellow, and Michael Burger, Executive Director Earlier this week, the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law staff and our team of summer interns toured several sites on Staten Island where New York State is implementing innovative storm recovery measures. Staten Island was among the areas most devastated by Superstorm […]