Hot Off the Presses: An Intro to Climate Change Law and Policy

The Paris Agreement. The Clean Power Plan. Geo-Engineering. Trump. And there’s more!

I’m really excited to announce the publication of Climate Change Law: Concepts & Insights (Foundation Press 2017), by Cinnamon Carlarne and me. There are lots of great scholarly tomes on the subject — either monographs or collected volumes. But there really hasn’t been anything that provides a comprehensive introduction to climate law as a whole, from international climate agreements to U.S. energy policy to geo-engineering. So far as I know, this is the first book to provide a cogent synthesis of the legal system’s response to climate change. The book is written to be accessible to law students and others who are not experts in environmental or energy law.

Climate Change Law provides introductions to U.S. energy regulation, the Clean Air Act, and federalism, as they bear on climate change regulation. The book also covers topics that are directly relevant for the United States but transcend any one country. Those topics include overviews of climate science, the economics of climate change, regulatory tools such as emissions trading, geo-engineering, climate adaptation, and international climate agreements.

Despite all our hard work, Hollywood isn’t beating a path to our doors for the movie rights! (Should I be played by Sean Penn? Idris Elba? Woody Allen? — a lot to think about there.)

But I believe deeply in the societal importance of this field of law. Anything that can help introduce more people to this increasingly critical field seems eminently worth doing. So while this may be the first attempt to create a synthesis of the whole field of climate law, I hope it won’t be the last.

2 Replies to “Hot Off the Presses: An Intro to Climate Change Law and Policy”

Dan, re: “Anything that can help introduce more people to this increasingly critical field seems eminently worth doing.”

First, LegalPlanet, and IPCC must stop being mutual admiration societies that marginale the public.

Second, and most importantly, academics around the world must join together to educate and motivate the public to demand climate protection actions today before we run out of opportunities and time to protect the human race from out of control disasters we are already experiencing today.

Your cultural failures to communicate with the public only amplify and perpetuate Us/Them dichotomies, and Trump is a consequence of your failures to learn from the lessons of history.

Anthony St. John says:

November 4, 2017 at 3:02 am

OK LegalPlanet, we now have THE REPORT, what are you academics going to do to educate the public to demand actions in time to protect the human race?:

“U.S. Report Says Humans Cause Climate Change, Contradicting Top Trump Officials”

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/03/climate/us-climate-report.html

Or is Ike still right when he said the following in his 1961 Farewell Address:

“The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present – and is gravely to be regarded.”

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