Climate Law Blog

Meredith Wilensky, Associate Director & Fellow Columbia Center for Climate Change Law Just three days before the 19th Conference of the Parties (COP) to the UNFCCC was set to begin in Warsaw, Poland, Typhoon Haiyan hit the eastern provinces of the Philippines killing as many as 10,000 people and displacing over 600,000. With winds up to […]

Rating State Hazard Mitigation Plans The Columbia Center for Climate Change Law released a report (and accompanying Excel database) today surveying and ranking all 50 State Hazard Mitigation Plans.  The Survey considers to what extent and in what manner climate change related issues are incorporated into existing plans.

by Fiona Kinniburgh A release of methane expected to occur as a result of Arctic warming is projected to cost an extra $60 trillion in climate change impacts according to a study published in Nature last week. This figure falls just short of the total value of the output of the global economy in 2012, […]

By Ann Tran, Summer Intern Among the many negative impacts of climate change, rising temperatures are causing more frequent and intense heat waves in numerous regions.  As many news outlets recently reported, on the weekend of June 28th, a heat wave struck in the West, breaking various temperature records and affecting parts of Nevada, Arizona […]

by CCCL Intern Congress passed the Biggert-Waters Flood Insurance Reform Act just two months before Sandy scoured the northeast, and “requires rates to rise 25 percent annually on some repeatedly flooded houses, second homes and businesses,” and on properties where the costs imposed by past floods exceed the property’s selling price.  The bill was a […]

Five months after Superstorm Sandy, the recovering northeast region continues to debate whether to rebuild in the most vulnerable coastal areas or whether to retreat and leave those lands as protective buffers.   A decision to engage in managed retreat would face significant legal, political, and practical challenges, but, according to a panel convened at Columbia […]

By Shawna Ganley. While the Clean Water Act prohibits discharge of pollutants into waterways, EPA regulations make exceptions for certain discharges in the event of extreme weather events, such as 10-year and 25-year storms.  These exceptions run the gamut from toxic pollutants such as DDT, to waste from factory farm effluent holding ponds, runoff from […]

by Anne Siders WNYC radio announced this morning that Mayor Bloomberg, as part of his post-Sandy recovery effort, is considering purchasing waterfront homes that were damaged by Sandy.   The plan would use some portion of the $1.8 billion in Community Development Block Grant funding that has been earmarked for New York City to purchase damaged […]

A coalition of energy, environmental and community interest organizations, led by Center for Climate Change Law, filed a formal petition with the New York Public Service Commission (PSC) requesting that the commission use its regulatory authority to require all utility companies within its jurisdiction to prepare and implement comprehensive natural hazard mitigation plans to address […]

by Michael Gerrard A great deal has been said about what Hurricane Sandy was. Quite a few superlatives have appropriately been used. But I would like to list six things that Hurricane Sandy was not: 1. Hurricane Sandy was not a worst case event.   It was a Category 1 hurricane when it hit New York. […]