Between January 2020 and March 2023, U.S. electronic cigarette sales grew 43%, from 15.6 million devices per month to 22.4 million devices. During this time frame, the portion of sales comprising disposable devices grew from 4 million to 11.9 million per month. The impact upon the environment has been largely overlooked by policymakers.
Plastic pollution is emerging as a defining crisis of our time. The United States has set a national goal to eliminate plastic release into the environment by 2040 and is engaging in negotiations on a global plastics treaty while simultaneously developing a national strategy. A recent report published by the Environmental Law Institute (ELI) and the Monterey Bay Aquarium provides a comprehensive overview of existing legal authorities the federal government can leverage to achieve this national goal while safeguarding human health and the environment.
Natural resource damages (NRD) under federal law is a statutory cause of action to compensate for injury to natural resources resulting from releases of hazardous substances or oil. Designated officials are authorized under the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA) and the Oil Pollution Act (OPA), among others, to act as “trustees” on behalf of the public or tribes.
The Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA) established the “Superfund,” which allows the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to clean up contaminated sites. It also forces the parties responsible for contamination to either perform cleanups or reimburse the government for the EPA-led cleanup work. The Superfund program relies on several tools to protect against lasting contamination.
On February 7, 2024, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced a final rule imposing a stricter limit for the fine particulate matter (PM2.5) national ambient air quality standard (NAAQS). The annual exposure standard for PM2.5, currently set at 12 micrograms per cubic meter of air, will now be 9 micrograms per cubic meter, marking the first time in over eight years that EPA has strengthened any NAAQS. The rule is predicted to have many health benefits, such as preventing 4,500 premature deaths by 2032, which may particularly affect overburdened communities.
As marketers across the fashion industry increasingly tout “circularity” initiatives, the reality remains that exponentially more clothes are being produced, purchased, and promptly thrown away than ever before. This Comment focuses on governmental responses to the environmental crisis created by textile waste that promote circularity in the fashion industry through extended producer responsibility (EPR) regulation of textiles.
Using the most comprehensive data set on U.S. household recycling behavior, this Comment quantifies the relative impact on recycling of characteristics associated with recycling in different populations, under different governmental rules, and having different facilitating resources and amenities.
The name of the climate game right now is fast, sustained progress. The world needs this both politically and technologically to effectively fight climate change. Progress was achieved both politically and technologically with the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 (IRA), which allocated $369 billion to “energy security and climate change,” amounting to the United States’ largest investment in climate action to date.
Carbon offsets allow polluters to pay someone else to reduce, avoid, or remove emissions to counterbalance their own emissions. For some, carbon accounting concerns render offsets a necessary evil to be tightly regulated on the path toward decarbonization. For others, moral and political concerns render offsets a dangerous mistake to be thrown out of the climate law toolbox.
A robust and growing commercial space sector is moving ahead at warp speed. While the industry today primarily offers satellite and launch services, tomorrow will bring manufacturing, research and development, resource extraction, and space tourism. What do these developments mean for the earth’s biosphere, as well as for the environments of other celestial bodies finally within humanity’s reach? This is the role of planetary protection, the principle of safeguarding both terrestrial and extraterrestrial environments from humanity’s propensity for introducing pollution into any habitat.