In producing over 274 million barrels of oil, 3.3 billion cubic feet of natural gas, and 302 million tons of coal each year, the Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM’s) decisions significantly impact U.S. and global greenhouse gas emissions; fossil fuels produced on federal land account for almost 24 percent of all U.S. CO2 emissions. This Article provides a legal road map for BLM to require all new oil and gas development to achieve net-zero emissions as a condition of operation.

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.

Numerous cities, states, and counties have sued fossil fuel companies, with claims based on evidence found in the companies’ own internal documents and statements. These companies have argued their public statements are protected by the First Amendment’s freedom of speech and right to petition clauses. This Article describes the current litigation, discusses the companies’ statements disseminated through various sources, and summarizes U.S. Supreme Court precedent and caselaw on commercial speech.

Plastics pollution has been an issue in the United States since discovery of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch catapulted it to the forefront of news reporting. Regulatory and academic activity around plastics has had a common feature: it focused almost exclusively on one stage in plastics’ linear model and framed the problem as a waste problem.

More than 50 years ago, Franklin Kury drafted and championed an Environmental Rights Amendment to the Pennsylvania Constitution. His book, The Constitutional Question to Save the Planet: The Right to a Healthy Environment (ELI Press 2021), expands upon the story of his amendment to demonstrate how its principles can be the basis for addressing climate change in the rest of the world.

Marine litter is human-created waste that has been discharged into the marine environment, including glass, metal, plastics, and other debris. According to data compiled by the United Nations, the equivalent of a garbage truck filled with plastic is dumped into the ocean every minute—more than 8 million metric tons per year. On November 11, 2019, the Environmental Law Institute hosted an expert panel that explored recent U.S.

Millions of tons of plastic enter the environment every year, killing wildlife, releasing toxins, clogging drains, and marring landscapes. Bans or restrictions on single-use plastics have exploded in popularity in recent years as a means of addressing these problems. Yet these bans remain controversial, with some businesses pushing back against what they consider excessive regulation and others maintaining that banning single-use plastics uses political capital that could be spent advancing more urgent and systemic agendas.

The U.S. Supreme Court's recent campaign to curtail congressional authority to legislate under the U.S. Commerce Clause has inevitably fostered speculation about the validity of parts of the Clean Water Act (CWA), the Endangered Species Act (ESA) and other federal environmental laws—heightened by the Court's recent decision to hear just such a claim. One view is that the decisions since United States v.

Editors' Summary: Although the Clean Air Act is the primary tool used for controlling air toxics, the dramatic increase in toxic tort cases brought under common-law theories such as nuisance, trespass, negligence, and strict liability for ultrahazardous activities has raised concern in the industrial community that compliance with regulatory requirements may not protect industry from large-scale toxic tort liability. This Article analyzes the implications of common-law liability on the selection of air quality controls.

The Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA), the Clean Water Act (CWA), and the Clean Air Act (CAA) represent federal regulatory regimes for protecting the environment. Although each statute initially places administrative responsibility in the hands of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), each encourages states, to varying degrees, to take primary responsibility for implementing the statutory regime.