By Diane Jung, Undergraduate Intern On June 19, 2014 both houses of the Rhode Island legislature passed the Resilient Rhode Island Act of 2014, which addresses climate mitigation, adaptation and resilience, and establishes greenhouse gas emissions reductions targets of 10% below 1990 levels by 2020, 45% by 2035, and 85% […]
Akiko Shimizu
18 posts
By Ellii Cho, Summer Legal Intern In 2010, the U.S. government formed an interagency working group of scientific and economic experts to develop an estimate of the social cost of carbon (SCC). The SCC puts a dollar figure on the damages done or damages avoided for possible scenarios resulting in […]
By Yeein Lee, Summer Legal Intern Even as President Obama’s commitment to fight climate change has led his Administration to support low-carbon nuclear power,[1] many U.S nuclear power plants are being shut down or slated to shut down, and fewer companies are seeking licenses to build new plants. Although the US […]
By Brian Park, Summer Legal Intern On June 11th, 2014, the Oregon Court of Appeals in Chernaik v. Kitzhaber reversed an Oregon trial court’s dismissal of a climate change challenge mounted under the public trust doctrine. The Court of Appeals ruled that the trial court was required to reach the merits […]
By Alyssa Kutner, Summer Legal Intern On June 30, 2014, the Environmental Protection Agency released a new Policy Statement on Climate Change Adaptation, building on the last policy statement released by the EPA in June 2011. In the statement, […]
By Alyssa Kutner, Summer Legal Intern There has been a lot of discussion and press around the EPA’s new Clean Power Plan, which is intended to reduce CO2 emissions from existing power plants by 30% from 2005 levels by 2030. The EPA proposed this plan on June 2nd under its Clean […]
By Isabelle Aubrun, CCCL Intern (Brown University) On June 2, Secretary of the US Department of Housing and Development (HUD) Shaun Donovan announced the Rebuild by Design Competition’s six winners. Created by President Obama’s Hurricane Sandy Rebuilding Task Force in 2013, ‘Rebuild by Design’ awards HUD funding to infrastructure projects […]
By Ellii Cho, Summer Legal Intern The National Environmental Policy Act of 1970 (NEPA) requires federal agencies to prepare environmental impact statements (EISs) for all “major Federal actions significantly affecting the quality of the human environment.”[1] This includes the issuance of federal permits. Even after an EIS is completed and […]