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The so-called Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act of 2026 (BAAJA, S. 5653) is the “four corners” permitting deal from Sens. Shelley Moore Capito, Mike Lee, Sheldon Whitehouse, and Martin Heinrich. They introduced it on September 30. It pairs real transmission and grid reforms, which the Natural Resources Defense Council rightly calls the bill's principal strength, with a broad rewrite of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), the Clean Water Act (CWA), the Endangered Species Act (ESA), and the National Historic Preservation Act. The bill is bad substance, procedure, and strategy.

Farmed or wild? If you’re like me, choosing fish at the market opens a whirlpool of questions and choices. You check the price, the country of origin, maybe a label promising something something “sustainability.” Ian Urbina’s excellent article in a recent edition of The New York Times Magazine asks us to go further: What did your fish eat? And who paid the price for putting it on your plate?

Just in time for Halloween, EPA has served up a trick for the public and a treat for polluters. Methane is an invisible gas that haunts the air we breathe, and EPA’s latest attempt to dismantle crucial pollution protections would make the biggest leaks even harder to see. Worse, by scrapping the Methane Super Emitter Program, it would leave no one to call when the ghost appears. And it is the product of a much broader industry campaign that the Trump administration has not merely tolerated but championed.

Washington has a gift for cloaking unpopular ideas in appealing names. One recent example is the Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act of 2026, or BAAJA, a sweeping “permitting reform” measure introduced this September by Sens. Shelley Moore Capito, Mike Lee, Sheldon Whitehouse, and Martin Heinrich. Once stripped of its deceptive branding, the bill is an out-and-out assault on the National Environmental Policy Act, the bedrock environmental law that has for more than 50 years required the federal government to look before it leaps.

When I teach domestic or international environmental law, I often ask students early on: Why should we protect the environment? What should the goal of environmental law be? Sometimes, they say that we should protect the environment for its own sake. The species and ecosystems that make up the natural world, and perhaps the natural world itself, should be recognized as having intrinsic value, apart from whatever value they provide human beings. This way of looking at the world has deep roots in Indigenous worldviews, and it has many adherents today. Its influence can be seen in laws such as the Endangered Species Act, which protect species regardless of whether they provide benefits in measurable, human terms. Nevertheless, students usually say that the most compelling reason to protect the environment is to protect human beings.

Those of us who teach environmental law, be it domestic or international, are compelled to revisit how we teach those courses along with how we even choose to engage our students in these perilous times. This exercise is all the more difficult given the dejection left in the wake of a debilitating bombardment of bad news stories about our field.

They’re so cute! Earlier this month, thousands of baby redfish arrived by trailer at West Cove, on Louisiana’s southwestern coast. Volunteers then carried them in buckets to waiting boats, which motored them into nearby canals for release. That was the beginning of their lives in the wild. Until then, they had been growing in a hatchery. In all, about 150,000 young redfish (also known as red drum) were released in the Calcasieu Lake estuary, the Rigolets and waters near Grand Isle. Hatcheries give redfish a good head start. The rest depends on the habitat.

I wish to confirm that for environmental law teachers new and old — whatever our theological leanings — Rebecca Bratspies and Carmen Gonzalez have created a godsend. In a time of existential national turmoil, with previously solid legal ground as well as a host of mileposts being undermined at every turn, here is a welcome book for teachers. Teaching Environmental Law in Context reminds us that what we strive to do is essential, and Rebecca and Carmen’s lively, intricately detailed how-to manual shows how we can still do it well despite the current abysmal context.

What draws students to a class in environmental law, and after enrolling, what sustains them? The draw is surely the urgency of meeting this moment of escalating environmental and climate-based threat. The second question — what keeps students going? — points to the challenges inherent in studying the subject itself.