Climate Law Blog

By Jacob Elkin Today, the Sabin Center filed an amicus brief on behalf of the National League of Cities and the U.S. Conference of Mayors in West Virginia v. EPA, a case that is currently before the United States Supreme Court. The case concerns the scope of the United States Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) authority […]

By Romany M. Webb On Tuesday, November 2, the Biden administration unveiled a suite of measures aimed at controlling methane emissions from oil and natural gas facilities. Key among those measures are new emissions controls proposed by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) under section 111 of the Clean Air Act. This is not the first […]

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 decision has already started to […]

By Dena Adler, Jessica Wentz, and Romany Webb On Wednesday, June 19, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) finalized its so-called Affordable Clean Energy (ACE) rule. The ACE rule repeals and replaces the 2015 Clean Power Plan (CPP) which aimed to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from existing power plants by 30% below 2005 levels by […]

The Trump administration has undertaken a sweeping portfolio of actions aimed at weakening federal climate protections and promoting the development and use of fossil fuels. A new report from Columbia Law School’s Sabin Center for Climate Change Law takes a critical look at what this effort has actually accomplished. It concludes that the administration has […]

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 […]

There has been much talk in recent days about government control of information, particularly information relating to climate change. On Tuesday, the Los Angeles Times reported that the Trump Administration had instructed officials at the Environmental Protection Agency (“EPA”) not to post on social media, or speak to journalists. This was followed by a report […]

On March 15, 2013, President Obama formally announced his plan to create an “Energy Security Trust” to promote research and development of clean energy technologies.  The Trust was first mentioned by President Obama in his State of the Union address earlier this year, but he had not elaborated on the idea until the speech, given […]