Corporations today face increasing risks from climate change. These risks threaten not only the operations and infrastructure of the corporations, but ultimately their long-term financial soundness as well. For example, as has been noted with respect to the oil and gas industries, refineries often do not have high profit margins […]
Environment & Land Use
212 posts
Jennifer M. Klein, Esq. Associate Director & Fellow Flooding from Hurricane Katrina constitutes a taking of property without just compensation by the United States government, according to a recent decision from the United States Court of Federal Claims in Saint Bernard Parish Government, et al., v. The United States. Judge […]
By Michael Burger Executive Director This past weekend the Italian coast guard reported saving some 3,700 people at sea on a smuggler’s boat. This was but one boatload of the more 30,000 people who have fled Libya this year and attempted to migrate across the Mediterranean to Italy. An estimated […]
On numerous occasions Senator Mitchell McConnell, the Senate Majority Leader, has attacked the upcoming Clean Power Plan regulations that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is scheduled to issue in June of this year. Most notably, on March 19, 2015, he sent a letter to the National Governors Association urging the […]
Jennifer M. Klein, Esq. Associate Director & Fellow A federal judge in Colorado has vacated a permit to expand a coal mine in New Mexico, finding that the agency approving the permit failed to consider the mercury pollution that would be released into the air when the coal is burned […]
Last December, the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) issued revised draft guidance on the consideration of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and the effects of climate change in National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) reviews. As noted in a previous blog post, the proposed guidance directs federal agencies to consider: (1) the […]
The date is approaching for EPA to finalize its rules for controlling carbon dioxide emissions from existing power plants, and states are contemplating their responses to those rules. A number of commentators have recommended that states “just say no” to EPA and refuse to prepare state plans complying with the […]
Jessica Anne Wentz Associate Director and Postdoctoral Fellow In the early morning of February 28, 2010, storm Xynthia hit the French Atlantic coast, overwhelming coastal defenses and flooding over 50,000 hectares of land. The storm caused over one billion euros of damage and 47 fatalities in the Vendée Department of […]