This Comment seeks to prepare lawyers to address environmental risk management in the context of transactions, including: (i) transfers of ownership of corporate assets and of real property; (ii) extensions of secured credit; and (iii) issuance of securities. It offers tools for lawyers to assist clients in the identification of environmental risks, their assessment, and their avoidance or allocation to others. It also assists clients in understanding the goals of lawyers seeking to assess and manage environmental liabilities.

In 1982, U.S. Department of the Interior Secretary James G. Watt merged the responsibilities for revenue collection and regulatory oversight of offshore oil and gas industries under the Minerals Management Services (MMS). This created a dangerous conflict of interest within the MMS.

The Clean Development Mechanism under the Kyoto Protocol has been in place in China for several years, and today, China exists as the global center of CDM project development. Although the CDM has brought and is expected to bring considerable benefits to China, its limited and in some cases negative impacts may affect China’s sustainable development in the long run. Moreover, as the first Kyoto period is set to expire in 2012, the climate legal regime and the CDM are likely to be changed.

Modern consumption patterns are a product of the historical development and industrialization of the United States, including increased consumer spending and demand for energy-intensive goods. These historical and social trends provide the foundation for understanding contemporary patterns of consumption of natural resources, undoubtedly a cause of global climate change and other serious adverse environmental effects.

In the near future the use of coal may be legally restricted due to concerns over the effects of its combustion on atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations. Carbon capture and geologic sequestration offer one method to reduce carbon emissions from coal and other hydrocarbon fuel. While the federal government is providing increased funding for carbon capture and storage, congressional legislative efforts to limit carbon emissions have failed.

For a number of years, the U.S. federal tax code has imposed a tax on petroleum that finances the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund, an earmarked fund to help cover the costs of oil spills. BP’s massive 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico provided an unprecedented test for the Trust Fund and underscored the question of who pays for the costs of oil spills. The BP spill taught important lessons about the role of the tax and the Trust Fund, and the federal regulatory regime governing the responsible parties’ liability.

Natural resources, such as clean air and water, are public resources shared by all, yet owned by no one in particular. Since public resources are not sold in a free marketplace, they have no free market value that takes into account factors such as scarcity and environmental degradation. However, if such public goods are carelessly used without any rules governing their use, such resources inevitably succumb to the “tragedy of the commons,”2 under which resources that are free or available to everyone may be ruined by abuse or overuse.

Like a tripartite juggernaut, all three branches of the U.S. federal government are actively grappling with climate change in kind: legislation from the U.S. Congress; regulation from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA); and litigation in the judiciary all may come to bear on carbon emissions as a causal genesis of climate change. When all three branches of the federal government concurrently engage in questions of the same subject matter, interesting separation-of-powers concerns are implicated.

For those interested in the intersection of global greenhouse gas (GHG) regulation and responsible energy policy, December 23, 2010, was a day worth remembering. Over at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), regulators were announcing a schedule for rulemaking for new source performance standards (NSPS)1 for GHG emissions from refineries and power plants. Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal2 ran a lead editorial reflecting upon an apparent division in the ranks among power companies.