By Amy Turner This week marked significant growth for the building electrification movement, as the legal pathways in use by local governments to catalyze electrification doubled in number. Previously, local governments had pursued building electrification through building code provisions requiring or incentivizing electrification expressly, or through affirmative “bans” on […]
By Christoph Schwarte* In 1978, during a phase of the Cold War when relationships between East and West began to relax, the United States and 4 other nuclear powers (China, France, the Soviet Union and the UK) made unilateral declarations granting security assurances to non-nuclear- weapon states. Speaking on behalf […]
By Jaap Spier[1] On April 29, 2021 the German Constitutional Court (the Bundesverfassungsgericht, or GCC) rendered a ground-breaking judgment, requiring the German government to establish specific plans to achieve its mid-century greenhouse gas emissions goal. (An English press release is available here. The judgment, in German, and an unofficial English […]
By Margaret Barry and Korey Silverman-Roati 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@gmail.com. HERE […]
In order to achieve the greenhouse gas reductions needed to sustain a livable climate, we must scale up renewable energy capacity at a rapid pace. Wind and solar energy facilities emit no air pollution and have minimal environmental effects as compared to fossil fuel plants, but like all types of […]
By Michael Burger* On April 1, 2021, a unanimous Second Circuit panel dismissed a lawsuit filed by New York City against a handful of fossil fuel companies seeking damages for climate change harms under state public nuisance and trespass law. (The opinion and other case materials are available here.) The […]
President Biden, National Climate Advisor Gina McCarthy and many others in the administration leadership have touted its highly ambitious, whole-government approach to taking the climate crisis. In the administration’s first three months, we have already seen this begin to take shape. Yet, even as global leaders convene for President Biden’s Earth Day climate summit to make major announcements about new climate pledges, the international community, still recovering from four years of Donald Trump’s climate denial and disengagement, has begun to push back, at least in places, against the idea of U.S. leadership in the climate policy space. The question they raise is a good one: Can Biden’s climate policies last, even if an anti-regulation, anti-science, anti-environment president once again sits in the White House?
On Earth Day, citizens all around the world make a concerted effort to reflect upon their relationship with nature, and collectively share what specific actions we can take to protect our planet against threats such as air and water pollution, deforestation, species decline, extreme weather events, and more — all of which are exacerbated by climate change.
The “Rights of Nature” movement is fundamentally rethinking humanity’s relationship with nature, and it is gaining momentum. It is led by activists advocating for ecosystems such as rivers, lakes, and mountains to bear legal rights in the same, or at least a similar, manner as human beings. This movement is striving for a paradigm shift in which nature is placed at the center and humans are connected to it in an interdependent way, rather than a dominant one. How would such a legal system work, and could giving rights to nature help in the legal battle against climate change? A few case studies offer some insight.