Region: International

Panel – Environmental Law in China: Implications for Bay Area Business (September 27, 2011)

China Dialogue, Asia Society, K&L Gates, and the Business Council on Climate Change are sponsoring a panel on Environmental Law in China: Implications for Bay Area Business on September 27, 2011 in San Francisco.  I will be on the panel with a terrific group of speakers who work on climate change, environmental law, and green/clean-tech …

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Is USTR Trying to Increase China’s Carbon Emissions?

Our friends Daniel Firger and Michael Gerrard at Columbia Law School’s Center for Climate Change Law have written a useful new paper analyzing two important pending WTO climate cases.  Of these, the more important appears to be DS 419, in which the United States is challenging China’s wind energy subsidies. Firger and Gerrard note that …

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Green litigation in China today

For those interested in the state of environmental litigation in China, China Dialogue, a bilingual site on China’s environment, ran an excellent series of articles last month on the topic.  I opened the series with an article entitled “Green litigation in China today.”  Here is an excerpt. Environmental litigation is difficult business in China. Even …

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China and the Environment: Some Progress on Lead Pollution

It’s a pleasure to be joining the excellent group here at Legal Planet.  My focus will largely be on issues related to China and its environmental and energy challenges. I returned to the U.S. last month after seven years working in China on environmental protection and legal reform (mostly for the Natural Resources Defense Council).  …

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Millenium Development Goals Report 2011

We’re a little late on this, but early last month the United Nations issued its 2011 Millenium Development Goals report, which really should be at the top of the environmental community’s focus.  Usually, the MDGs are thought of simply as concerning poverty and development, but of course these issues deeply concern the environment.  More directly, although not …

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Post-Tsunami Japan Teaches the World About Energy Within Limits

Earlier this summer, I accompanied a class of renewable energy law students to a home in Vermont that is “off the grid”.  The family lives quite comfortably – television, microwave oven, electric washing machine, sizable refrigerator.  With the exception of a small diesel generator, which they use once or twice a year, they derive all …

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Is Climate Denial Like Appeasing Hitler?

  Britain’s Energy Secretary thinks so: World leaders who oppose a global agreement to tackle climate change are making a similar mistake to the one made by politicians who tried to appease Adolf Hitler before World War Two, British Energy and Climate Change Minister Chris Huhne said on Thursday…. “This is our Munich moment,” he added, referring to …

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The Greening of South Korea

Lincoln Davies has a nice post over at Environmental Law Prof about clean energy in South Korea.  He discusses a conference relating to Korea’s planned change from a feed-in-tariff to a renewable portfolio standard as means of promoting clean energy.   Most Americans aren’t aware of this, but Korea has embraced “green growth” as a national …

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But Will You Love My Energy Source in the Morning?

In the wake of cataclysmic energy disasters occurring on opposite sides of the globe, some interesting regional and national reflections are currently underway that may–or may not–alter long-term energy futures in the U.S. and abroad. One development this week that drew surprisingly little public attention is that no less a personage than the Prime Minister of …

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Assessing the British Ecosystem

The British government has issued a new report assessing the value of the U.K. environment.  The assessment is based on an economic evaluation of ecosystem services.  For instance, the report found that: • The benefits that inland wetlands bring to water quality are worth up to £1.5 billion per year to the UK; • Pollinators …

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