scholarly journals Implementing NEPA in the Age of Climate Change

2021 ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Jayni Foley Hein ◽  
Natalie Jacewicz
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Greenhouse Gas Emissions ◽  
Greenhouse Gas ◽  
Climate Change Impacts ◽  
Case Law ◽  
National Environmental Policy Act ◽  
Gas Emissions ◽  
Climate Change Effects ◽  
National Environmental ◽  
Regulatory Practice

The national government has a crucial role to play in combating climate change, yet federal projects continue to constitute a major source of United States greenhouse gas emissions. Under the National Environmental Policy Act, agencies must consider the environmental impacts of major federal actions before they can move forward. But agencies frequently downplay or ignore the climate change impacts of their projects in NEPA analyses, citing a slew of technical difficulties and uncertainties. This Article analyzes a suite of the most common analytical failures on the part of agencies with respect to climate change: failure to account for a project’s downstream and upstream greenhouse gas emissions; failure to acknowledge a project’s effect on the country’s energy mix; and failure to consider a reasonable social cost of carbon. After summarizing current regulatory practice and case law on each topic, this Article finds that despite protestations that accounting for such impacts is infeasible, agencies already possess many of the tools needed to assess such impacts, and indeed, some agencies already use these tools to do so. Furthermore, courts are increasingly holding agencies accountable for a full and fair assessment of climate change effects in NEPA analysis. This Article aims to highlight best practices so that agency offices can learn from one another, fulfill NEPA’s mandate, and begin to provide leadership in the fight against climate change.

Introduction

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-10
Author(s):  
Eelco J. Rohling
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Global Warming ◽  
Greenhouse Gases ◽  
Greenhouse Gas Emissions ◽  
Greenhouse Gas ◽  
Emission Reduction ◽  
Climate Change Impacts ◽  
Paris Agreement ◽  
Gas Emissions ◽  
Is Implementation

This chapter outlines the challenge facing us. The Paris Agreement sets a target maximum of 2°C global warming and a preferred limit of 1.5°C. Yet, the subsequent combined national pledges for emission reduction suffice only for limiting warming to roughly 3°C. And because most nations are falling considerably short of meeting their pledges, even greater warming may become locked in. Something more drastic and wide-ranging is needed: a multi-pronged strategy. These different prongs to the climate-change solution are introduced in this chapter and explored one by one in the following chapters. First is rapid, massive reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. Second is implementation of ways to remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere. Third may be increasing the reflectivity of Earth to incoming sunlight, to cool certain places down more rapidly. In addition, we need to protect ourselves from climate-change impacts that have already become inevitable.

Assessing climate change impacts on greenhouse gas emissions, N losses in drainage and crop production in a subsurface drained field

2020 ◽  
Vol 705 ◽  
pp. 135969 ◽  
Author(s):  
Qianjing Jiang ◽  
Zhiming Qi ◽  
Lulin Xue ◽  
Melissa Bukovsky ◽  
Chandra A. Madramootoo ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Greenhouse Gas Emissions ◽  
Greenhouse Gas ◽  
Crop Production ◽  
Climate Change Impacts ◽  
N Losses ◽  
Gas Emissions

Lawyer Up

2019 ◽  
pp. 37-55
Author(s):  
Hill and
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Greenhouse Gas Emissions ◽  
Greenhouse Gas ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Fossil Fuel ◽  
Climate Change Impacts ◽  
Force Action ◽  
Gas Emissions ◽  
Media Attention ◽  
Directors And Officers

Media attention has focused most intently on lawsuits seeking to force action to cut greenhouse-gas emissions and to hold fossil-fuel companies to account. Even if the courts fail to resolve the essential challenge of cutting greenhouse-gas emissions, they will surely find themselves enmeshed in litigation for years over who pays for the damage. In courtroom after courtroom, judges will reach decisions that can contribute to or hinder resilience. This chapter explores how litigation over the harm caused by climate change impacts could offer greater clarity on who should pay for the damages and thereby spur decisions to invest in resilience on a large scale. As the severity and frequency of climate change-related damages grow, corporate directors and officers, architects, engineers, manufacturers, and others who have a duty to consider foreseeable harm and to manage the risk, will likely find themselves on the receiving end of litigation alongside fossil fuel companies and governments.

Hurry or Wait – The Pros and Cons of Going Fast or Slow on Climate Change

2015 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Eleanor Denny ◽  
Jurgen Weiss
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Greenhouse Gas Emissions ◽  
Greenhouse Gas ◽  
Rate Of Change ◽  
Electricity Sector ◽  
Low Carbon ◽  
Gas Emissions ◽  
Climate Change Effects ◽  
The Cost ◽  
Low Carbon Technologies

AbstractClimate change risk will likely force the de-carbonization of our electricity sector and thus involve massive investments in long-lived assets using many new and emerging technologies. Since technological progress (independent or dependent on deployment) will likely lower the future cost of those technologies, investing early and rapidly forecloses saving money by installing those technologies at a lower cost later. There are thus benefits to waiting until the costs of renewables fall further. However, there are also costs to waiting. First, given the longevity of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, cumulative emissions matter and lowering greenhouse gas emissions earlier is beneficial. Second, there is significant uncertainty not only over the rate of change of the cost of low carbon technologies, but also over the cost of greenhouse gas emissions. The costs of waiting are complex in that the distributions themselves are unknown (and quite possibly have “fat” tails). There may also be complex timing issues such as points of no return in terms of global greenhouse gas concentrations, beyond which the costs of adapting to climate change effects become essentially infinite. Hurrying can therefore be considered an insurance policy against the unknown but perhaps increasing risk of catastrophic damage.

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