This Essay suggests that policy responses in climate change adaptation must be addressed and that focusing on adapting laws may be a good way to undertake this work. Following a review of existing scholarship and normative theories concerning law generally, environmental law, climate change, and...

It is almost certain that the US Congress is going to pass some kind of comprehensive climate change legislation that in some fashion will have mandatory limits or costs for the production of Carbon Dioxide. How this legislation is constructed will have enormous impacts on the economy and the...

In determining whether a federal climate change law should pre-empt state laws in the area, it is helpful to examine the reasons for pre-emption in the environmental context. This examination of when pre-emption is warranted would indicate that in most instances, federal climate change...

Repetitive losses from natural disasters are a multi-billion-dollar problem, and climate change threatens to make it worse. However, the problem is avoidable, and this Article offers a new analytical framework to explain how.While some disaster losses are inevitable, we argue that recurrent...

This article suggests a novel concept in climate change law and attorney ethics law by proposing that many states’ attorney ethics laws could be interpreted to require, or at least permit, attorneys to disclose client activity relating to greenhouse gas emissions. Every state has some form of...

The United States has long suffered from a schizophrenia about energy policy. The importance of one of the factors in energy policy, the environment, has never been formally defined. Climate change adds another distinct layer to this complexity, as neither energy policies nor environmental...

Preparing for the impacts of climate change will require strategic planning and comprehensive action by both the public and private sectors, and each sector influences the other. The private sector generates the overwhelming majority of economic output in the United States and is regulated for...

In 2009, the promise of a comprehensive federal cap and trade bill to address climate change fell apart. At least in part, this was due to the fears that exotic 'carbon' financial instruments might cause more financial crises. As California launches it economy wide carbon trading system, and...

Because of the failure to pass comprehensive climate change legislation, United States federal actions on climate change adaptation have been focused in the executive branch. An examination of these policies reveal that they are accomplishing some policy goals but that the key elements of...

One of the first actions of the Environmental Protection Agency after the declaration of the COVID-19 crisis in mid-March 2020 was to announce that it would relax its enforcement policies with respect to environmental reporting and violations during the time of the pandemic. Ostensibly this was...