Updates to the Climate Change Litigation Charts – August and September 2016

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 […]

Should the Government Impose a Climate Change Impacts Fee on Federal Coal Leases? New Working Paper Presents the Legal and Policy Rationales for This Measure

In a new working paper, Executive Director Michael Burger presents a “Mitigation-Based Rationale for Incorporating a Climate Change Impacts Fee into the Federal Coal Leasing Program.” The paper makes several key points about the rationale for introducing such a fee, most notably, that the federal government has a duty to […]

The Electric Grid and Its Regulators—FERC and State Public Utility Commissions, a New Chapter in the Sabin Center’s Handbook, Legal Tools For Climate Adaptation Advocacy

Payal Nanavati Columbia Law School Class of ‘17 Climate change has already begun to force elements of the electric grid to operate in conditions materially different from those for which they were designed. Persistent high temperatures, heavy or reduced precipitation, extreme weather events, and sea-level rise can all affect grid […]

Wyoming Federal Court Upholds Law Criminalizing “Unlawful Collection of Resource Data”

A July 2016 federal court decision has upheld Wyoming laws that impose criminal and civil penalties for collection of “resource data”[1] when the collection involves trespassing on private lands, even when the trespass is unintentional, and even when the trespass is incidental to the collection. The Wyoming legislature enacted these […]