Climate Law Blog

By Jacob Elkin and Elza Bouhassira Going back to 1978 and through this month, Congress has acknowledged climate change in a total of 87 enactments, as shown by a database just posted by Columbia’s Sabin Center for Climate Change Law. The database collects Congress’s references to climate change, along with related terms and concepts like […]

By Amy Turner On August 16, President Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act (or “IRA”), widely hailed as the most ambitious piece of climate legislation in U.S. history. The bill is sprawling, covering climate and energy topics as diverse as electric vehicles, building decarbonization, clean energy manufacturing and supply chains, agriculture, and greening the electricity […]

By Romany Webb and Lauren Kurtz As of August 14, the federal government has attempted to censor, misrepresent, and otherwise stifle science over 150 times. We know this because, in January, the Sabin Center and Climate Science Legal Defense Fund launched the Silencing Science Tracker (SST). As its name suggests, the SST records federal government […]

by Ross Wolfarth JD Candidate, 2012 On July 27, 2011, the House Transportation Committee Subcommittee on Aviation held a contentious hearing on the European Union’s plan to incorporate aviation into its CO2 cap-and-trade plan, known as the EU Emissions Trading System (ETS). Beginning in 2012, the EU will require airlines to hold carbon emissions allowances for […]

Brian Bowman Fellow After several unsuccessful bills in prior sessions of Congress, legislative proposals for a federal clean energy standard (“CES”) are once again being discussed in the current session. Senator Jeff Bingaman (D-NM) and Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), two key Senators from the Committee on Energy & Natural Resources, recently released a white paper […]

By: Danielle Sugarman On Thursday, April 14, Congress approved a bipartisan agreement that will fund the government through the end of the fiscal year. The trillion-dollar continuing resolution (CR) passed the House on a 260-167 vote, with 108 Democrats and 59 Republicans in opposition, before moving to an 81-19 approval in the Senate, with four […]

Brian Bowman Fellow On March 25, 2011, the Columbia Center for Climate Change Law made available on its website a climate legislation tracker for the 112th Congress.  This resource summarizes, and will continue to follow, legislative proposals from both houses of Congress which have the potential to impact U.S. federal law as it relates to […]

By Danielle Sugarman Fellow Taking advantage of the fact that government funding was set to run out on March 4th, House Republicans used the need for a Continuing Resolution (“CR”) on the Fiscal Year 2011 budget to push through radical cuts in the discretionary budget and additional provisions that, if enacted, would block the EPA […]

Gregory E. Wannier Deputy Director On February 7, 2011, Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) introduced a bill on the floor of the U.S. Senate to impose a Congressional veto over any rule passed by any federal agency costing over $100 million (regardless of projected benefits).  This bill, cosponsored by 24 other Republican Senators,[1] represents the latest […]

By Julia Ciardullo Fellow With the 112th Congress now in session, Senators from both parties have already introduced legislation that would block EPA’s ability to regulate greenhouse gases (GHGs).  This post addresses two of the most notable examples: First, on January 31, 2011, Senator John Barrasso (R-WY) introduced the “Defending America’s Affordable Energy and Jobs […]