The Domestic Response to Global Climate Change: What Role for Federal, State, and Litigation Initiatives?

This Article takes as given that climate change is a serious environmental problem that requires a legal response-a response that is likely to change the way we live. This Article evaluates the most significant existing federal and state measures. This Article not only highlights the key features of federal, state, and litigation initiatives; it also addresses their respective roles

Decentralizing Cap-and-Trade? The Question of State Stringency

This Article addresses a critical question about a state\u27s role in the operation of a national cap-and-trade program: whether federal legislation should allow states to be more stringent than the federal government. ... This Article is the first in a series that will address the wisdom of allowing state control within a federal trading system. ...Part II of this Article articulates the primary justifications for allowing states to set more stringent caps. ...Part III turns to practical mechanisms to achieve state stringency. ...Part IV articulates the potential adverse impacts that could result from states using these mechanisms to achieve more stringent goals. ...Part V concludes that, on balance, state stringency is justified. ...Part VI briefly articulates some of the implications of the foregoing analysis for federal legislation....The Article addresses only a potential downstream cap-and-trade program focused on stationary sources-a program that would impose allowance requirements on the actual emitters of GHGs. It does not address an upstream program that would impose requirements on entities like oil producers, mining companies, the transportation sector, or other entities that are upstream from, and do not directly cause emissions. This Article also focuses on the wisdom of designing federal legislation to incorporate state control, not judicial standards for determining whether and to what degree federal legislation, once designed, preempts state action

A Broader Vision for Climate Policy: Lessons from California

As the federal role in addressing climate change shrinks, state and local action is once again taking center stage. States are facing innumerable challenging policy questions about the best mechanisms for addressing climate and energy, and many are looking to California for inspiration. This article focuses on a particular and unique feature of California’s approach: the integration of social and environmental justice concerns into the state’s climate and energy policies. As decisionmakers grapple with the fundamental and existential shifts associated with a clean energy transition, California’s efforts to incorporate environmental justice—and the state’s broader social, economic, and environmental vision–provide important insights about the potential for comprehensive climate initiatives in other state

Energy, Governance, and Market Mechanisms

As climate modelers’ projections materialize through intense storms, catastrophic flooding, unprecedented heat waves, and more, the need for substantial decarbonization within the next few decades has become increasingly clear. Transitioning to clean energy will bring benefits and drawbacks and will create winners and losers. Who will decide how we transition? Our choice of policy tools will have significant implications for who controls the transition and how it unfolds. Many economists promote the role of market-based mechanisms like carbon taxes or cap-and-trade, mechanisms that rely largely on private actors to make crucial decisions. Under this view, government measures would fill in as necessary; they would complement market-based decarbonization mechanisms. Although market advocates treat the autonomy of private decisions as one of the market’s central virtues, I argue that that approach could shortchange collective deliberation on critical questions about our future path. I argue that government-driven climate action planning and prescriptive strategies should play a central role. Governmental institutions have the capacity to engage in expansive deliberation over the many values and tradeoffs at stake, the capacity for long-term planning, and a greater capacity for public engagement and democratic accountability than atomized decision-making in the energy marketplace. In this view, a carbon pricing mechanism could play an important role—but one that complements governance rather than the other way around