Vibrant Environment
All | Biodiversity | Climate Change and Sustainability | Environmental Justice | Governance and Rule of Law | Land Use and Natural Resources | Oceans and Coasts | Pollution Control
Alicia Mozian, recipient of the 2017 National Wetlands Community Leader Award, retired in October after 35 years of dedication to environmental sustainability in Connecticut. Mozian served over two decades as the Conservation Department Director of Westport, overseeing most aspects of Westport’s environment.
An environmental threat of very real proportions concerns celestial objects such as asteroids that hit the Earth—as everyone knows, one did in the dinosaurs. The same applies in a less dangerous but more frequent manner to unwanted “de-orbiting” of artificial satellites, and to the careless discarding of the boosters used to get them aloft.
Clean energy technologies require a variety of minerals of varying degrees of scarcity. As a result, decarbonizing the economy will entail expansion of mineral production—not only through imaginative reuse and recycling, but also through new mines and the permits required to build those mines. Some have called for a loosening of environmental standards to address this growing need.
Managed retreat is deemed by most as a viable adaptation option to climate-related extreme weather events. Yet, the practice is controversial due to the negative impacts it can have on marginalized communities.
Passed on August 16, 2022, the Inflation Reduction Act commits nearly $370 billion in direct investment to address climate change and energy production.
Developments this past summer—including the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in West Virginia v. EPA and the historic passage of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA)—have dramatically reshaped the future of U.S. climate law.
Twenty-five years before Silent Spring, Rachel Carson published her first essay in The Atlantic on the wonders of ocean life. Titled “Undersea,” the piece showcased Carson’s “commitment to making the reader feel something,” reports Anelise Chen in the same magazine 85 years later.
Not long after the Clean Water Act (CWA) became the law of the land on October 18, 1972, providing the basic structure for regulating pollutant discharges into the waters of the United States (WOTUS), bureaucratic battle lines were drawn at the newly created U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Recent judicial and administrative changes to the scope of the Clean Water Act of 1972 (CWA) have major implications for state regulators. In this month’s issue of ELR—The Environmental Law Reporter, ELI Senior Attorney James McElfish examines the existing legal framework for state protection of nonfederal waters and discusses potential impacts of upcoming federal decisions, including the U.S. Supreme Court’s consideration of Sackett v. Environmental Protection Agency in October.