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My book with fellow Member Scholar Rebecca Bratspies was inspired by an article written by former UN Special Rapporteur (and Member Scholar) John Knox (and co-author Nicole Tronolone) evaluating U.S. environmental law through the framework of international human rights law. With several noteworthy exceptions (such as climate change), Knox and Tronolone concluded that the U.S. (at the end of the Biden administration) generally complied with the substantive and procedural requirements of the right to a healthy environment. However, they described the government’s failure to address environmental injustice as nothing short of “catastrophic.” Far from remedying these shortcomings, the current administration is reinforcing them, as regulatory rollbacks proliferate, equity-based initiatives are dismantled, and coordinated political campaigns seek to ban the teaching of "divisive concepts" such as climate change and racial justice.

Last year, Governor Josh Stein created the North Carolina Artificial Intelligence (AI) Leadership Council to chart a roadmap on AI leadership and policy in the state. The roadmap report published by the council leaves many important areas unaddressed and falls significantly short on others, including harms like high bills, lost jobs, pollution, drought, mass surveillance, and more.

Teaching right now is no joke! This is especially true of teaching environmental law. Most of us teaching in this area have dedicated our professional lives to protecting the environment — the air, the water, the land, and of course the people who breathe that air, drink that water, and live on that land. Each day is more painful than the last as our work is dismantled in front of our eyes. Institutions that seemed solid bulwarks against tyranny are crumbling into dust. In this moment of crisis, fellow Member Scholar Carmen Gonzalez and I set out to write a book for our fellow professors struggling to find their feet — consider Teaching Environmental Law in Context a kind of love letter to the better world we are convinced we can build together with our students.

It’s August here in western Washington State, which means two things: (1) I’ll soon be packing up for my return to New Orleans (class starts soon), and (2) the smoke blowing in from regional wildfires is making my nose burn. Appropriately, the news here is full of stories about personal loss, evacuation routes, fire-suppression strategies, and the brave firefighters who put their lives on the line to keep us safe. But there’s a deeper story: Our broad approach to handling wildfire in the United States was designed for a climate that no longer exists. We must do better.

This is a hard moment for the work we care about. The rules that keep our air breathable, our water clean, our workplaces safe, and our government answerable to the people are under real pressure. Agencies are losing the authority to do their jobs. The idea that government should protect people when markets will not is being treated as if it were up for debate. And the communities that suffer most from pollution, unsafe work, and a warming climate are still the last ones invited into the rooms where the choices get made. I spent my childhood two blocks from a power plant grandfathered out of Clean Air Act protections in Texas and suffered from chronic bronchial infections while multiple family members and friends managed asthma. In law school, I learned to value the regulations and bureaucracy that could be made to protect people’s lives. So I am honored to join the Center’s work as executive director.

As the United States reaches the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, we at the Center for Progressive Reform find ourselves reflecting on a history that is both extraordinary and in progress. We also recognize that this anniversary carries different meanings for different people. Skye Perryman, President and CEO of Democracy Forward, puts it […]

PJM, the regional transmission organization (RTO) responsible for grid operations in all or part of 13 Eastern U.S. states and Washington, DC, just asked the federal Department of Energy (DOE) to issue an emergency order under the Federal Power Act. In its request, PJM asked to allow for “large loads” (functionally, although not limited to, data centers located in the PJM footprint) to run emergency backup power generation between July 1 and July 2. This is in preparation for the extreme multi-day heatwave that is forecast for the eastern part of the country through the July 4 holiday weekend.

Across the country, legislators are figuring out how to regulate the worst harms from data centers. In North Carolina, the latest bill to do so is Senate Bill 730. Unfortunately, SB 730 is not a step forward in protecting North Carolinians from the harms of data centers. Rather, it is a step sideways, evading needed regulations.

This excerpt is from a commentary originally published in The Conversation. In recent years, at least two dozen local and state governments have sued petroleum companies to recover the billions in costs they have incurred responding to and rebuilding after flooding, storms and wildfires – all of which have been worsened by changes to the […]