ELI In the News
David Hayes has ideas for blunting climate disasters
A top White House climate adviser denounced "fiscally irresponsible repeat spending on disaster after disaster" and said the government should improve the nation's resilience to floods and other perils. David Hayes, President Biden's special assistant for climate policy, says in a new article that the Federal Emergency Management Agency should encourage states to develop "climate resilience plans" to help them incorporate risks from warming into disaster recovery. . . .
Read More >How the Biden administration can take action for biodiversity conservation
President-elect Joe Biden ran his campaign, in part, on a promise to fight climate change. But climate isn’t the only crisis in town. The world also faces biodiversity losses on a massive scale. In 2019, the United Nations put out a report documenting the current biodiversity crisis, noting that 1 million animal and plant species could be at risk of extinction. And, just as with climate, the Biden administration could take action to protect biodiversity, conservationists say. . . .
Read More >Environmental Law Institute Statement on Race: Our Commitment to Transformational Change
I was raised in the segregated Deep South in Jackson, Miss., and was not yet 12 in 1963, when Bull Connor used firehoses and snarling dogs in an effort to prevent students from demonstrating outside of Birmingham’s City Hall. In June of that same year, civil rights leader, Medgar Evers, was assassinated in Jackson. Later that fall, four African-American schoolgirls, ages 11 to 14—Addie Mae Collins, Cynthia Wesley, Carole Robertson, and Carol McNair—were killed by a white supremacist who bombed their Birmingham church during Sunday morning services.
Read More >Carbon Emissions From Ride Hailing are Worse Than We Knew
Initial data indicate ride-hailing isn’t as good for the environment as many assumed, at least not in its current form. With a focused, practical bent, Joshua Skov, an instructor of management and sustainability at the Lundquist College of Business at the University of Oregon, and his colleagues sought to disentangle ride-hailing from other sources of carbon emissions in community-scale greenhouse gas (GHG) inventories. . . .
Read More >Inuit-lead study lays framework for Arctic co-management
Since time immemorial, the Inuit were solely responsible for managing Arctic resources. A new multi-year study published last month looks at ways to once again put traditional knowledge and Indigenous people in the driver's seat of marine management decisions. "There is a very strong sense that Indigenous people have a very deep understanding of our ecosystem that western science or people do not have," said Mary Peltola, an advisory member on the project as well as the director of Kuskokwim River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission in Bethel.
Read More >Unpacking the Bioeconomy: A Closer Look at What’s on the Market and What’s Coming
This week, thousands of people will convene (virtually) for the Global Bioeconomy Summit, a biennial event normally held in Berlin to discuss emerging opportunities and challenges of the bioeconomy. Many anticipate the biotechnology market to be worth $727.1 billion by 2025, so events like these are capturing the increased attention and active involvement of government agencies that may be key to driving growth in multiple economic sectors in the future. As public and private sector investments ramp up, what exactly can we expect in terms of new applications and products? . .
Read More >Key Environmental Law and Policy Issues to Watch in the Biden Administration
On November 7, Joe Biden was projected to become President-elect. This news alert provides a high-level review of issues to watch and changes to expect in a Biden administration. Although the makeup of the Senate is not yet entirely clear, it seems that there will not be a change in Senate leadership and that the House will remain under Democratic control. The ultimate fate of the Senate majority will be decided on January 5, 2021 with the runoff of the two Georgia Senate Seats. For the Democrats to become the majority, they would need to prevail in both Senate races. . . .
Read More >Will we learn from Oregon's wildfire history and avoid the clearly predictable coming firestorms?
The most deadly, destructive and widespread catastrophic-scale forest fires in Oregon’s history erupted on Labor Day this year, driven by strong east winds. Unless we change how our national and state forests are managed, these events will be just one more chapter in this age of predictable, increasing and ever-greater firestorms. I spent my career studying forest fires and forest health.
Read More >What has four years of President Donald Trump meant for Florida’s environment?
Under President Donald Trump, the federal government has rushed into a deregulation push unlike anything longtime environmental advocates say they have ever seen. The changes, including rollbacks to landmark rules on issues such as clean air and endangered species, go beyond familiar partisan seesawing between Republican and Democratic leadership. “On some level, the administration .... see(s) this as perhaps a generational opportunity to remake what the federal role in environmental protection is about,” said James McElfish, a senior attorney at the Environmental Law Institute.
Read More >Watch: How Green Is the Digital Economy?
David Rejeski, visitor scholar at the Environmental Law Institute, describes efforts to obtain objective information about the “green” impacts of technological innovations such as blockchain, platform sharing and artificial intelligence. When the environmental community addresses advances in technology, it often does so “10 to 15 years too late,” says Rejeski.
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