Water, Water, Everywhere?
sea level rise
C. Scott Fulton
Wednesday, April 5, 2023

One of my roles as ELI’s International Envoy is serving on the Steering Committee of the new Climate Crisis Commission established by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN). For those of you unfamiliar with the IUCN, it is a fairly unique international NGO with an extensive interdisciplinary and cross-sectoral membership base that includes governments, other NGOs, practitioners, academics, and the like.

Empowered Women
strong women
Kirk Talbott
Thursday, March 23, 2023

The soft voice of the public radio host replaced the fading Ella Fitzgerald song as I drove up to the Silver Spring metro station. She announced that it was International Women’s Day. I smiled at the coincidence, as I was about to meet two Ugandan women, civil society leaders, on a recent, cold, overcast spring day. Who knew what a bright morning laid ahead.

The Argument for Environmental Assessments (Part 1)
Forest floor
Frank Friedman
Monday, January 16, 2023

It’s a fact recognized by every well-behaved child: the attention always goes to the misbehaving sibling or classmate. Similarly, companies with strong environmental audit/assessment programs rarely receive much acclaim, despite publicizing their efforts in great detail. And why should they? These gold-star companies have minimal interaction with the enforcement arms of federal and state agencies.

A Down Payment on Climate Change
Capitol Hill
Jordan Diamond
Wednesday, December 14, 2022

When I last sat down to write this column, the Supreme Court had just issued its 6-3 decision in West Virginia v. EPA. As I said at the time, it was disheartening, and many in the environmental law field were assessing how to bounce back from its potential effects limiting agency action. Fast-forward two months, and while the concerns raised by that case aren’t gone, we’ve spun in the other direction.

Critical Minerals and Fast-Tracking the Clean Energy Transition
Electric vehicle
Akielly Hu
Wednesday, November 16, 2022

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.

Welcome to the Regulatory Arcade: A Ping-Pong Approach to EPA’s Risk Management Program Rule
Ping pong ball
Steven I. Addlestone
Wednesday, November 9, 2022
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Risk Management Program (RMP) rule has undergone notable changes in the past five years, resulting in modifications to significant aspects of the program that coincide with the past three presidential administrations.
Subscribe to Governance and Rule of Law