Introduction: Global Climate Change: Individual, Private-Sector, and State Responses
By Daniel Shean, Editor-in-Chief
This special issue grows out of the Virginia Environmental Law Journal's Spring 2007 Symposium, “Global Climate Change: Individual, Private-Sector, and State Responses.” The authors in this issue present a wide array of proposals for addressing climate change in the United States. In the wake of the Supreme Court's recent decision Massachusetts v. Environmental Protection Agency, growing public recognition of the effects of climate change, a flurry of proposed climate change bills in the House and Senate, and the upcoming change of presidential administrations, the proposals contained in this issue offer a diverse menu of very practical and relevant legal and policy solutions for individuals, courts, and state and federal legislators.
The Virginia Environmental Law Journal would like to thank John Dernbach, Michael Vandenbergh, Andrew Green, Robert McKinstry, Thomas Peterson, Perry Wallace, Kevin Doran, and David Hodas for participating in the Symposium and providing scholarship for this issue. The Journal would also like to thank Barry Rabe and Andrew Hoffman, both of the University of Michigan, William Bumpers of Baker Botts, and Ruth Greenspan Bell of Resources for the Future for their participation in the Symposium. Robert Glicksman, Deborah Rhode, and Andrew Schatz were not participants in the Symposium, but their pieces are included in this issue because of their particular relevance to the topics covered at the Symposium. Finally, the Journal would like to thank Dean John C. Jeffries, Jr. and faculty advisor Jon Cannon for their dedicated support of both the Symposium and the Journal. What follows is a brief synopsis of each of the pieces contained in this issue.
The first piece in this issue, Robert Glicksman's Article, Nothing is Real: Protecting the Regulatory Void Through Federal Preemption by Inaction, focuses on the recent battle over the authority of the states to regulate activities that contribute to global climate change in light of the federal government's inaction. Glicksman provides a framework for courts to use to help identify when inaction by Congress or a federal regulatory agency should be deemed to preempt state law. His recommendations aim to strike an appropriate balance between federal and state power while minimizing the risk that preemption of state law will create a regulatory void that creates unacceptable risks to human health and the environment.
In Climate Change: The Equity Problem, Michael Vandenbergh and Brooke Ackerly explore options for decreasing individual carbon emissions that also enhance the ability of those with greater discretion in their consumption patterns to enable changes in consumption among those with less discretion. They suggest an extension of the currently-growing retail carbon offset market, as well as the incorporation of that market into proposed federal cap and trade schemes for carbon emissions that currently target industrial sources. Andrew Green presents a similar focus on the impact of individual choice on climate change in his Article, Self Control, Individual Choice, and Climate Change. Green examines how the manner in which individuals choose over time affects government policy responses, and he offers some practical suggestions that governments may utilize to help reconcile individuals' often conflicting short-term preferences for consumption with longer-term preferences for environmental protection in the context of global climate change. In similar fashion, John Dernbach addresses how Congress can engage individuals in the effort to combat global climate change in his Article, Harnessing Individual Behavior to Address Climate Change: Options for Congress. He recommends specific provisions for future climate change legislation to complement restrictions that address major emitters of greenhouse gases. In Environmental Values and Behaviors: Strategies to Encourage Public Support for Initiatives to Combat Global Warming, Deborah Rhode and Lee Ross explore public values and behaviors concerning global warming. The authors address the problem of incentivizing Americans to act in environmentally-responsible ways even when such actions are unlikely to have little direct personal benefit. The Essay provides a practical list of strategies to increase public support for global warming initiatives.
Kevin Doran shifts the focus from the individual to state, regional, and local government responses to global climate change. He takes up the question of whether sub-federal climate change mitigation efforts can be viewed as rational in his Article, U.S. Sub-Federal Climate Change Initiatives: An Irrational Means to a Rational End?. Thomas Peterson, Robert McKinstry, and John Dernbach build off of Doran's focus on states' actions with respect to climate change. They describe key aspects of state responses and suggest a mechanism whereby the Clean Air Act could be used to incorporate state experience to produce an integrated, economy-wide approach to combatting global climate change in Developing a Comprehensive Approach to Climate Change Policy in the United States that Fully Integrates Levels of Government and Economic Sectors. In a similar vein, David Hodas presents a range of policy and legal tools that could be implemented on a national level to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in his Essay, Imagining the Unimaginable: Reducing U.S. Greenhouse Gas Emissions by Forty Percent. Hodas advocates a national per capita greenhouse gas emissions goal of twelve tons per person.
Perry Wallace provides a unique perspective on private sector responses to climate change in his Article, Climate Change, Fiduciary Duty, and Corporate Disclosure: Are Things Heating Up in the Boardroom?. Wallace provides an analysis of the corporate and securities law obligations, if any, of corporate actors to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Finally, Andrew Schatz advocates for mandatory disclosure of greenhouse gas emissions as a necessary complement to any future national regulation in his Note, Regulating Greenhouse Gases by Mandatory Information Disclosure. Schatz proposes a mandatory Greenhouse Gas Release Inventory that would provide a significant impetus for substantial voluntary reductions in overall greenhouse gas emissions.
The Journal again thanks all of the authors in this issue for their generosity and hard work in contributing such insightful legal scholarship. It is the Journal's hope that the multitude of solutions and proposals presented in the pieces below will be harnessed in a constructive fashion by citizens, legal practitioners, courts, and legislators in the coming years, as the nation and the world continue to confront the serious environmental, economic, and social problems presented by global climate change.
The Virginia Environmental Law Journal would like to thank John Dernbach, Michael Vandenbergh, Andrew Green, Robert McKinstry, Thomas Peterson, Perry Wallace, Kevin Doran, and David Hodas for participating in the Symposium and providing scholarship for this issue. The Journal would also like to thank Barry Rabe and Andrew Hoffman, both of the University of Michigan, William Bumpers of Baker Botts, and Ruth Greenspan Bell of Resources for the Future for their participation in the Symposium. Robert Glicksman, Deborah Rhode, and Andrew Schatz were not participants in the Symposium, but their pieces are included in this issue because of their particular relevance to the topics covered at the Symposium. Finally, the Journal would like to thank Dean John C. Jeffries, Jr. and faculty advisor Jon Cannon for their dedicated support of both the Symposium and the Journal. What follows is a brief synopsis of each of the pieces contained in this issue.
The first piece in this issue, Robert Glicksman's Article, Nothing is Real: Protecting the Regulatory Void Through Federal Preemption by Inaction, focuses on the recent battle over the authority of the states to regulate activities that contribute to global climate change in light of the federal government's inaction. Glicksman provides a framework for courts to use to help identify when inaction by Congress or a federal regulatory agency should be deemed to preempt state law. His recommendations aim to strike an appropriate balance between federal and state power while minimizing the risk that preemption of state law will create a regulatory void that creates unacceptable risks to human health and the environment.
In Climate Change: The Equity Problem, Michael Vandenbergh and Brooke Ackerly explore options for decreasing individual carbon emissions that also enhance the ability of those with greater discretion in their consumption patterns to enable changes in consumption among those with less discretion. They suggest an extension of the currently-growing retail carbon offset market, as well as the incorporation of that market into proposed federal cap and trade schemes for carbon emissions that currently target industrial sources. Andrew Green presents a similar focus on the impact of individual choice on climate change in his Article, Self Control, Individual Choice, and Climate Change. Green examines how the manner in which individuals choose over time affects government policy responses, and he offers some practical suggestions that governments may utilize to help reconcile individuals' often conflicting short-term preferences for consumption with longer-term preferences for environmental protection in the context of global climate change. In similar fashion, John Dernbach addresses how Congress can engage individuals in the effort to combat global climate change in his Article, Harnessing Individual Behavior to Address Climate Change: Options for Congress. He recommends specific provisions for future climate change legislation to complement restrictions that address major emitters of greenhouse gases. In Environmental Values and Behaviors: Strategies to Encourage Public Support for Initiatives to Combat Global Warming, Deborah Rhode and Lee Ross explore public values and behaviors concerning global warming. The authors address the problem of incentivizing Americans to act in environmentally-responsible ways even when such actions are unlikely to have little direct personal benefit. The Essay provides a practical list of strategies to increase public support for global warming initiatives.
Kevin Doran shifts the focus from the individual to state, regional, and local government responses to global climate change. He takes up the question of whether sub-federal climate change mitigation efforts can be viewed as rational in his Article, U.S. Sub-Federal Climate Change Initiatives: An Irrational Means to a Rational End?. Thomas Peterson, Robert McKinstry, and John Dernbach build off of Doran's focus on states' actions with respect to climate change. They describe key aspects of state responses and suggest a mechanism whereby the Clean Air Act could be used to incorporate state experience to produce an integrated, economy-wide approach to combatting global climate change in Developing a Comprehensive Approach to Climate Change Policy in the United States that Fully Integrates Levels of Government and Economic Sectors. In a similar vein, David Hodas presents a range of policy and legal tools that could be implemented on a national level to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in his Essay, Imagining the Unimaginable: Reducing U.S. Greenhouse Gas Emissions by Forty Percent. Hodas advocates a national per capita greenhouse gas emissions goal of twelve tons per person.
Perry Wallace provides a unique perspective on private sector responses to climate change in his Article, Climate Change, Fiduciary Duty, and Corporate Disclosure: Are Things Heating Up in the Boardroom?. Wallace provides an analysis of the corporate and securities law obligations, if any, of corporate actors to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Finally, Andrew Schatz advocates for mandatory disclosure of greenhouse gas emissions as a necessary complement to any future national regulation in his Note, Regulating Greenhouse Gases by Mandatory Information Disclosure. Schatz proposes a mandatory Greenhouse Gas Release Inventory that would provide a significant impetus for substantial voluntary reductions in overall greenhouse gas emissions.
The Journal again thanks all of the authors in this issue for their generosity and hard work in contributing such insightful legal scholarship. It is the Journal's hope that the multitude of solutions and proposals presented in the pieces below will be harnessed in a constructive fashion by citizens, legal practitioners, courts, and legislators in the coming years, as the nation and the world continue to confront the serious environmental, economic, and social problems presented by global climate change.
