Florida Law Review

Allison Fischman, Case Comment: Preserving Legal Avenues For Climate Justice In Florida Post-American Electric Power

zhyman — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 04:48:45 +0000

64 Fla. L. Rev. 295 (2012)| | |

In American Electric Power Co. v. Connecticut (AEP), the U.S. Supreme Court held that “the Clean Air Act and the EPA actions it authorizes displace any federal common law right to seek abatement of carbon-dioxide emissions from fossil-fuel fired power plants,” foreclosing the use of federal common law rights of action in climate change litigation. The Court left unanswered the question of whether the Clean Air Act also displaces state common law tort actions, suggesting that state-based claims such as public nuisance could play some part in future climate change litigation. The opinion, however, conveys the Court’s preference to confine climate change litigation to agency- and regulatory-focused actions, as opposed to common law tort actions. After briefly summarizing the case, this Comment considers the implications of that preference with regard to the “climate vulnerable”-populations that are disproportionately impacted by the effects of climate change-with a focus on Florida.

Victor B. Flatt, Essay: Adapting Laws For A Changing World: A Systemic Approach To Climate Change Adaptation

zhyman — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 04:48:25 +0000

64 Fla. L. Rev. 269 (2012)| | |

This Essay suggests that policy responses in climate change adaptation must be addressed and that focusing on adapting laws may be a good way to undertake this work. Following a review of existing scholarship and normative theories concerning law generally, environmental law, climate change, and adaptation, this Essay then proposes a template for approaching the adaptation of laws. This template would (1) examine where climate change puts pressure on the operation of laws; (2) seek to alter the implementation of that law or to alter the law itself to hew closely to the law’s original purposes; and (3) make these alterations in the most efficient manner possible while also correcting any distributive reallocations. Where the law’s original purposes cannot be accommodated or are so broad as to fail to constitute a clear legislative principle, policy changes should be made in the democratic forum, not by an administrative process. The Essay concludes with examples from working groups implementing the template approach.

Sarah Krakoff, Planetarian Identity Formation And The Relocalization Of Environmental Law

zhyman — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 04:48:11 +0000

64 Fla. L. Rev. 1 (2011)| | |

Local food, local work, local energy production-all are hallmarks of a resurgence of localism throughout contemporary environmental thought and action. The renaissance of localism might be seen as a retreat from the world’s global environmental problems. This Article maintains, however, that some forms of localism are actually expressions, appropriate ones, of a planetary environmental consciousness. This Article’s centerpiece is an in-depth evaluation of local climate action initiatives, including interviews with participants, as well as other data and observations about their ethics, attitudes, behaviors, and motivations. The values and identities being forged in these initiatives form the basis for timely conceptions of the human relationship with the planet, which in turn provide grist for environmental law and policy design. One overarching conclusion is that environmental laws, even those aimed at solving problems of planetary scale, should include elements that foster localism. The reasons to do so are twofold and strangely complementary. First, in an instrumentalist vein, sustained attitude and behavior changes are most likely to be accomplished through the positive feedbacks between personal and community norms. Second, if we fail to rein in carbon emissions as a global matter, at least some communities will have nurtured the attitudes, behaviors, and patterns of living that might be most adaptive to the resource challenges and scarcities of a climate-changed world. By fostering the planetarian identity, localism therefore has the potential to redeem environmental law, even in the face of its potential failure.

David Markell and J.B. Ruhl, An Empirical Assessment of Climate Change In The Courts: A New Jurisprudence Or Business As Usual?

zhyman — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 04:47:56 +0000

64 Fla. L. Rev. 15 (2012)| | |

With the demise of climate legislation in Congress, and the Supreme Court’s rejection of climate-related lawsuits brought under federal common law, rapt attention has turned to the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) efforts to bring greenhouse gases into the regulatory fold. Certainly, as the works in this special issue of the Florida Law Review demonstrate, EPA is not the only important player in the climate arena; indeed, as I will reluctantly suggest, the Agency’s efforts here appear to be waning rather than waxing. Even so, before turning to other aspects of the problem of climate change, discussed in other works in this issue, it is worth taking stock of where EPA is now, how it came to this point, and how it might proceed from here.

While legal scholarship seeking to assess the impact of litigation on the direction of climate change policy is abundant and growing in leaps and bounds, to date it has relied on and examined only small, isolated pieces of the vast litigation landscape. Without a complete picture of what has and has not been within the sweep of climate change litigation, it is difficult to offer a robust evaluation of the past, present, and future of climate change jurisprudence. Based on a comprehensive empirical study of the status of all (201) climate change litigation matters filed through 2010, this Article is the first to fill those gaps and assess the state of play of climate change in the courts. It concludes that the story of climate change in the courts has not been one of courts forging a new jurisprudence, but rather one of judicial business as usual.

Part I of the Article outlines the scope of climate change litigation, explaining what qualifies as climate change litigation in our study, our methodology for identifying and coding case attributes, and our typology of the claims that have been or likely will be made as climate change moves relentlessly forward. Part II then presents and assesses the major theme revealed from our empirical study and largely missing from commentary on climate change litigation-that a siege-like battle between “pro” and “anti” regulation interests has led to an increasingly robust and complex litigation landscape but with mixed results for both sides. Drawing from those findings, Part III takes on a set of empirical and normative questions designed to summarize and assess the climate change litigation experience and its impacts on the content and institutions of climate policy. It is evident at all levels of inquiry that courts have taken a “business as usual” approach to climate change, resisting litigants’ attempts to make courts a locus of direct policymaking, but courts nevertheless have influenced the policy content and its institutional contours dramatically. We extract these themes from the full experience of climate change litigation and suggest fruitful paths of research to develop a better understanding of the role and impact of the courts in the climate change policy arena. Part IV then stretches a bit from the confines of our empirical study and findings to speculate about the future of climate change litigation.

Robert W. Adler, Balancing Compassion And Risk In Climate Adaptation: U.S. Water, Drought, And Agricultural Law

zhyman — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 04:47:15 +0000

64 Fla. L. Rev. 201 (2012)| | |

It is inevitable that the world will experience a significant amount of global warming before efforts to mitigate the buildup of greenhouse gases (GHGs) in the atmosphere can even begin to succeed. Therefore, adaptation to climate change impacts, as well as mitigation, will be necessary to deal with climate disruption. In designing climate change adaptation efforts, a looming issue is how to balance the need and compassionate impulse to provide financial and other relief to victims of climate disruption impacts with the equally compelling need to reduce the overall risk of those impacts. U.S. water, drought, and agricultural law and policy provide a good example of how past disaster relief efforts have sought to compensate drought victims or to insulate them against the effects of drought, but in the process have encouraged behavior that increases long-term risk and vulnerability. For example, past and ongoing water and agricultural law and policy encourage production of crops with high water demand and with inefficient irrigation methods, even in arid regions, and fail to provide significant incentives for sustainable water use.

In the long run, a more “compassionate” approach, particularly as a strategy for climate change adaptation, is to implement systemic policies to reduce vulnerability to drought and other climate-induced disasters by increasing the sustainability of various economic sectors in advance. For example, drought should be defined such that governmental relief is available only for impacts that are beyond the range of reasonable predictability; and drought relief should be conditioned on actions to use water more sustainably, and thereby to reduce drought vulnerability. Similarly, agricultural policy should provide incentives to shift production, particularly of water-intensive crops, to regions with increasing, rather than decreasing, water supply. These efforts to balance compassion and risk will become increasingly important as drought and other impacts of climate disruption become more frequent and more severe.

Dave Owen, Critical Habitat And The Challenge Of Regulating Small Harms

zhyman — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 04:46:21 +0000

64 Fla. L. Rev. 141 (2012)| | |

This Article investigates how the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the National Marine Fisheries Service, and the courts are implementing the Endangered Species Act’s prohibition on “adverse modification” of “critical habitat.” That prohibition appears to be one of environmental law’s most ambitious mandates, but its actual meaning and effect are contested. Using a database of over 4,000 “biological opinions,” interviews with agency staff, and a review of judicial decisions considering the adverse modification prohibition, this Article assesses the extent to which the Fish and Wildlife Service, the National Marine Fisheries Service, and the courts are relying on the adverse modification prohibition to provide habitat protection. It also assesses the extent to which these groups are providing habitat protection by invoking other Endangered Species Act provisions. This Article concludes that although agency practice and some judicial decisions substantially depart from statutory requirements, with problematic results, the agencies are still providing substantial habitat protection through other means. It then considers the implications of these findings, first for ongoing debates about Endangered Species Act implementation and reform and then for broader discussions about legal strategies for responding to small environmental harms and the incremental degradation they cause.