The Environmental Forum

Volume 36 Issue 1

January-February 2019

This issue's articles are available below.

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Weaponizing Precaution

LEAD FEATURE ❧ Akin to climate deniers, the EU distorts science to halt imports of food from the United States and other nations. The result is a trade imbalance in agricultural goods, hurting American producers and impoverishing developing-country farmers at the same time.

By Bernard D. Goldstein
University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health

With SIDEBARs from an American farmer and two EU agricultural trade officials.

Be Prepared!

CENTERPIECE ❧ What can EPA do to help communities confront the impacts of climate change? Resilience and adaptation are the key words driving the agency's web-based portal that informs and empowers local decisionmakers as they encounter the environment of the future.

By Joel Scheraga
Environmental Protection Agency
Signs of Opposition

COVER STORY ❧ While the election won't reverse the Trump administration's deregulatory agenda, oversight in the House is likely to slow such efforts by casting a public light on their consequences and the means and motives of the president's agency appointees.

By Jeremy Bernstein
InsideEPA

With SIDEBARs by Bob Sussman from the left and by Jeff Holmstead from the right.

Nicholas A. Robinson

TESTIMONY ❧ The Magna Carta and successors recognize a right to the environment as central to human existence. 193 national charters recognize such a right--but not the U.S. Constitution. This right does not lie latent in America's state constitutions, however, and can also be read into the federal document as well. Meanwhile, recognition of enviornmental rights is expanding globally.

By Nicholas A. Robinson
Pace University Elisabeth Haub School of Law
As Our Problems Out Race Our Solutions, Humanity Needs a Completely New Strategy

On the first Earth Day, in April 1970, Senator Edmund Muskie called for “a total strategy to protect the total environment.” We have had time to pull this off — nearly a half century after Muskie’s clarion call — but have failed. Yes, gains in environmental quality have happened, but as time has passed, we have witnessed the emergence of global level, existential threats. The human race is pushing on or through what the Stockholm Resilience Center has called “planetary boundaries.” The old approaches have failed. But what would a new paradigm, built on lessons learned, look like?

By: David P. Clarke

TSCA risk evaluation approach foreseeably on Dems' agenda.

By: Craig M. Pease

Why institutions don't respond to a clear and present danger.

By: Linda K. Breggin

Ballot measures meet with limited success in face of large spending.

By: Kathleen Barrón

Data show renewables alone don't always equate to carbon-free.

By: Richard Lazarus

Kavanaugh's ascent is enormously significant for environmental law.

By: Ethan Shenkman

Clean Air Act practitioners debate Brett Kavanaugh's judicial record.

By: Robert N. Stavins

How best to govern geoengineering in the race to save Earth's climate.

By: Bruce Rich

Tax evasion that harms the global commons: no problem if it's legal?

By: G. Tracy Mehan III

On "Pricing Lives: Guideposts for a Safer Society."

By: Laura Frederick

Colleagues’ new jobs, promotions, and achievements.

By: Stephen R. Dujack

Oil spill kicked off anti-pollution era.

By: Laura Frederick

Apple VP Lisa Jackson honored with annual prize; former Attorney General Eric Holder gives introductory address at annual Award Dinner.

By: Carl Bruch

Report on environmental rule of law.

By: Scott Fulton

Macbeth Report: Cooperative federalism reimagined.