Environmental Law
Envt'l Law News Spring 2014, Vol. 23, No. 1
Content
- 2013-2014 Environmental Law Section Executive Committee
- Advancing Producer Responsibility To Control Land-based Sources of Marine Plastic Pollution
- Articles from the 2013 Environmental Law Conference at Yosemite Panel "Dire Gyre: Is the Problem of Ocean Plastic Pollution Insoluble?
- As Jurisdictions Like California Sort Out Regulation of Hydraulic Fracturing, Nimby Approaches Pop Up in Other Jurisdictions
- Big Things Come In Small Packages: Ninth Circuit Issues Nation's First Decision on Nanotechnology
- California Supreme Court Decision Expands Public's Right to Access Government-Held Digitally-Formatted Data
- California's "Magic" Number: Nine Goals for 2020 and Where We May Go From There
- Editor's Note...
- Environmental Law News Publications Committee
- Introduction: Is the Problem of Ocean Plastic Pollution Insoluble?
- Ocean Plastic
- Table of Contents
- The 2013 Environmental Legislative Recap: a Break in the Perpetual Gridlock
- The Problem of Plastic Debris
- Alternatives to Litigation to Address Climate Change
Alternatives to Litigation to Address Climate Change
by Kiran Sahdev*
When the crisis occurs, the actions taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. That, I believe, is our basic function: to develop alternatives to existing policies, and to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes the politically inevitable.
-Milton Friedman1
Today, there is widespread consensus that climate change exists and poses a set of unprecedented challenges. Environmental challenges associated with climate change include melting arctic ice, rising sea levels, increases in air and ocean temperatures, intensifying weather events, increasing desertification, and declining forests.2 Existing models indicate that these challenges inevitably give rise to socio-economic impacts, including declines in global agriculture yields, increased drought, escalating rates of famine, and diminished public health.3 Some populations will be disproportionately impacted and even forced to leave their homes due to inhabitability (such displaced populations are known as climate refugees).4 Others face the very real consequences of property damage.