Climate Change and the WTO: Expected Battlegrounds, Surprising Battles

This article examines the issue of climate change policy and international trade law. While conventional wisdom may have predicted that conflicts in trade law would emerge through climate-related protectionist measures, such as carbon tariffs on imports from countries with less stringent controls on greenhouse gas emissions, the authors point out that government support for climate-friendly technologies has in fact emerged as the primary battleground. The authors examine two recent disputes—between the United States and China and between Japan and Canada – over green subsidies and their implications for the future of clean energy

Overcoming Impediments to Offshore CO\u3csub\u3e2\u3c/sub\u3e Storage: Legal Issues in the U.S. and Canada

Limiting future temperature increases and associated climate change requires immediate action to prevent additional carbon dioxide being released into the atmosphere and to lower the existing atmospheric carbon dioxide load. This could be advanced through carbon capture and storage (CCS), which involves collecting carbon dioxide that would otherwise be released by power plants or similar facilities and injecting it into underground geologic formations, where it will remain permanently sequestered. The techniques developed for CCS can also be used to sequester carbon dioxide that has been removed from the atmosphere using direct air capture or other negative emission technologies. Past CCS research has primarily focused on sequestering carbon dioxide onshore, for example, in depleted oil and gas reservoirs or deep saline aquifers. This Article explores the legal framework governing sub-seabed carbon dioxide injection (offshore CCS) in U.S. and Canadian waters, particularly the Cascadia Basin, where there is a large sub-seabed basalt rock formation with significant storage potential

Permitting Seaweed Cultivation for Carbon Sequestration in California: Barriers and Recommendations

Interest is growing in seaweed cultivation and sequestration as a carbon dioxide removal strategy. This white paper explores the barriers to seaweed permitting for carbon sequestration in California, including a complex, costly, and time-consuming lease and permitting process. Other states in the U.S., namely Maine and Alaska, have permitting systems designed to be more supportive of seaweed cultivation. This paper describes the legal framework for seaweed cultivation permitting in California and discusses the permitting systems in Maine and Alaska. The paper then explores possible reforms to streamline California’s permitting process, while maintaining appropriate environmental and other safeguards

Removing Carbon Dioxide Through Ocean Alkalinity Enhancement and Seaweed Cultivation: Legal Challenges and Opportunities

This paper explores two ocean-based carbon dioxide removal strategies – ocean alkalinity enhancement and seaweed cultivation. Ocean alkalinity enhancement involves adding alkalinity to ocean waters, either by discharging alkaline rocks or through an electrochemical process, which increases ocean pH levels and thereby enables greater uptake of carbon dioxide, as well as reducing the adverse impacts of ocean acidification. Seaweed cultivation involves the growing of kelp and other macroalgae to store carbon in biomass, which can then either be used to replace more greenhouse gas-intensive products or sequestered. This paper also examines the international and U.S. legal frameworks that apply to ocean alkalinity enhancement and seaweed cultivation. Depending on where they occur, such activities may be subject to international, national, state, and/or local jurisdiction. Under international law, countries typically have jurisdiction over activities within 200 nautical miles of their coastline. In the U.S., coastal states typically have primary authority over areas within three nautical miles of the coast, and the federal government controls U.S. waters further offshore

Transverse Shifts in Paraxial Spinoptics

The paraxial approximation of a classical spinning photon is shown to yield an "exotic particle" in the plane transverse to the propagation. The previously proposed and observed position shift between media with different refractive indices is modified when the interface is curved, and there also appears a novel, momentum [direction] shift. The laws of thin lenses are modified accordingly.Comment: 3 pages, no figures. One detail clarified, some misprints corrected and references adde