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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 […]

EPA has said it would no longer try to quantify the harms done by the two most serious, widespread air pollutants. Given that these are the most fully understood of all environmental impacts, it’s not clear what future regulations, if any, might still be subject to cost-benefit analysis. This didn’t come out of the blue. Rather, it is the culmination of a series of steps that began when President Donald Trump first took office in 2017.

It is tempting to think that the threat of the current Congress abusing the Congressional Review Act (CRA) is over, now that the deadline to revisit rules implemented during the previous Congress’s session—provided by the CRA’s unique “lookback provision”—has formally passed. But that would be a mistake, as conservative lawmakers have found novel ways to target agency actions from previous administrations.

The question of which court should hear a case isn’t always as easy as it might seem — and the answer can sometimes make a difference in the potential outcome. For instance, in 2013, the government of Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana, decided to sue several oil companies for violating a 1978 state law that required a state permit for oil production along the Louisiana coast.

The Trump administration recently repealed the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s 2009 endangerment finding—the scientific and legal determination that greenhouse gases threaten public health and welfare that has anchored federal climate regulation for nearly two decades. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin called the finding “the Holy Grail of federal regulatory overreach.” Within weeks, a coalition of more than 20 states filed suit in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit to reverse the repeal. The legal battle that follows will help define American environmental policy for a generation. Brigham Daniels and I did not plan the timing of our new book, Lessons for a Warming Planet: A Vital History of US Environmental Law, to coincide with this particular legal conflict. But we could not have chosen a more clarifying moment for its release. The endangerment finding repeal is not an aberration—it is a recognizable recurrence in a history that stretches back centuries. Law has always been the primary engine of both environmental exploitation and protection in the United States.

On April 23, the Baltimore Sun published an op-ed lambasting efforts by localities and states to hold the fossil fuel industry responsible for decades of misinformation about the dangers of their products. These hazards to the public’s health, welfare, and safety are now coming home to roost in the form of extreme weather, increased flooding […]

On April 24, The Washington Postpublished an op-ed that sought to blame an unusual source for the high energy and gas prices Americans are now facing: justice. Specifically, it claims that these price increases are the result of state and local governments trying to hold Big Oil accountable for the climate-related harms their constituents are continuing to suffer. I submitted a letter to the editor debunking the op-ed’s argument, noting that the real cause of higher gas prices is the illegal war in Iran.

The U.S. Forest Service (USFS) is undergoing one of the most consequential and likely disruptive transformations in its 121-year history. The agency plans to relocate its headquarters from Washington, D.C., to Salt Lake City and overhaul its structure and management. According to a Forest Service press release from March 31, the overhaul aims to bring leadership “closer to the forests and communities they serve,” replacing the agency’s long-standing regional model with a state-based structure. At first glance, the rationale seems intuitive. Forest management should be informed by local conditions, local relationships, and decisions made closer to the ground. But that premise raises a more fundamental question: what happens when the scientific infrastructure that informs those decisions is dismantled at the same time?

As the release date of my forthcoming book, Unlearn Power: Strengthening Communities in the Age of Environmental Crisis, approaches, naturally, I've been asked, "What's the book about?" But given the amalgamation of ecological devastation across the planet, with fallout and stakes unevenly felt across socioeconomic lines and underscored by political forces that engage in climate denialism and assaults on democratic institutions, I urge that "Why Unlearn Power?" is the more apropos question.