The Role of New Towns in Louisiana Coastal Retreat
Coastal Zone Management in Louisiana
The Global Reinsurance Market and the Economics of Climate Change
The Precautionary Principle
Treaty on European Union, Article 191
2. Union policy on the environment shall aim at a high level of protection taking into account the diversity of situations in the various regions of the Union. It shall be based on the precautionary principle and on the principles that preventive action should be taken, that environmental damage should as a priority be rectified at source and that the polluter should pay.
The Rio Declaration on Environment and Development (1992)
Principle 15
In order to protect the environment, the precautionary approach shall be widely applied by States according to their capabilities. Where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent environmental degradation.
The Rio Declaration on Environment and Development (1992)
PDF for printing – The Rio Declaration on Environment and Development (1992)
The First Climate Treaty – The Montreal Protocol
Chlorofluorocarbons and Ozone Depletion – A National Historic Chemical Landmark
Molina, Mario J., and F. Sherwood Rowland. “Stratospheric sink for chlorofluoromethanes: chlorine atom-catalysed destruction of ozone.” Nature 249.5460 (1974): 810. (the first ozone hole paper)
The Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer
Summary – Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer
The Hole – A film on the Montreal Protocol, narrated by Sir David Attenborough
Negotiating the Montreal Protocol on Protecting the Ozone Layer – interview with one of the State Department negotiators.
Financing the Montreal Protocol in the developing world
Report on the World Bank Multilateral Fund for the Implementation of the Montreal Protocol (2007)
Peter M. Morrisette, The Evolution of Policy Responses to Stratospheric Ozone Depletion, 29 Nat. Resources J. 793 (1989). (Available at: https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/nrj/vol29/iss3/9)
EPA, Stratospheric Ozone Protection: 30 Years of Progress and Achievements (2017)
Decarbonization
The Paris Climate Change Agreement
Paris Mismatches: The Impact of the COP21 Climate Change Negotiations on the Oil and Gas Industries
President Trump’s Withdrawal from the Paris Agreement Raises Legal Questions: Part 1 & 2. CRS (2017)
Data Driven Yale, NewClimate Institute, PBL 2018: Global climate action of regions, states and businesses. Research report published by Data Driven Yale, NewClimate Institute (2018)
Subnational climate change mitigation efforts will not offset the US withdrawing from the Paris Agreement.
Sea-level rise Projections for Maryland 2018
In fulfillment of requirements of the Maryland Commission on Climate Change Act of 2015, this report provides updated projections of the amount of sea-level rise relative to Maryland coastal lands that is expected into the next century. These projections represent the consensus of an Expert Group drawn from the Mid-Atlantic region.
Climate Change Risks to Mountain Ecology and Communities
Putting the Camp Fire in perspective
The Great Fire of 1910 (original link)
This is a report on the Fire of 1910, which burned over 3,000,000 acres/4,700 sq. miles over a weekend. (Likely started by flaming cinders from a steam train.) The Camp Fire burned about 100,000 acres. The 1910 fire lead to the fire suppression policies by the US Forest Service that ultimately contributed to current fires. (These were co-opted by the timber industry, so it is not clear what the forest service on its own might have done through time as it saw the effects of the policies.) But the nature of temperate coniferous forests is that they burn, and even in a state of nature, large areas may burn. As with flooding, it is only an issue when people enter the picture, turning a natural phenomenon into a disaster.
The 1910 fire was not the biggest or most deadly:
Fire resistant construction and community design is not significantly more expensive than conventional construction and has additional benefits by increasing resistance to wind damage. It is pretty expensive to retrofit, however. The principles have been known for a long time, but the political will to impose the construction standards has been limited. Our insurance folks will know better, but at least until the most recent fire seasons, the cost of fire insurance has not been high enough in these areas to incentivize better construction. Part of the reason is that the homeowners and their communities do not pay the cost of firefighting, which usually can save the houses. Thus the risk is subsidized, as with flood insurance and flood control projects. (Fire insurance for high end homes in fire areas does include the cost of firefighting, which is what brings in those private teams to foam the house and the area when a fire threatens.)
Mississippi Supreme Court finds that artificial beach is public trust property
Harris v. State, 2018 WL 5839607 (Miss. Nov. 8, 2018).
Abutting landowners brought an action against the State of Mississippi, a city, and a county to confirm title to waterfront properties. A trial court granted partial summary judgment in favor of the landowners on the issue of tideland boundaries, confirmed the landowners’ title, and ruled that the government parties failed to prove adverse possession or public prescriptive easement. On appeal, the Mississippi Supreme Court reversed and remanded. Following a trial, the lower court held that Mississippi held title to the sand beach in front of landowners’ properties as public-trust tidelands and granted easements to the county and city. The landowners appealed. The Mississippi Supreme Court held that the beach was public-trust tidelands; the trial court acted within its discretion in relying on lay witness testimony that the beach was man-made; the expert report did not establish that beach was natural rather than man-made; and the pumping of sand along the shoreline did not constitute an uncompensated taking.