About Warming Law Blog

 

The Warming Law blog is a place for people who write about, think about, or wonder about how the third branch of government, the judiciary, is addressing one of the most urgent environmental issues of our time.  As one industry lawyer put it, “I think now everybody realizes we've moved into the judicial arena” in the fight against global warming.

Yesterday, the Supreme Court issued a 5-4 ruling in Massachusetts v. EPA, holding that EPA must reconsider whether to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from motor vehicles under section 202 of the federal Clean Air Act.  As Community Rights Counsel stated in a release yesterday, the Court’s ruling “represents a tremendous victory in one of the most important environmental cases ever decided by the Supreme Court on the preeminent environmental challenge of our time.”

But the Court’s ruling is only the beginning.   Innovation on global warming solutions is taking place in regions, states, and local governments across the country.  Industry has challenged, or threatened to challenge, all of these innovations in court and as the cases discussed in the sidebar to this blog indicate, many of these court challenges were put on hold pending the outcome of Mass. v. EPA.  This blog will track these cases as they move through the court system.  Initially, our focus will be on Massachusetts v. EPA, as we pick the opinion apart and analyze its intricacies and implications. For those looking for background on the case, we have sidebar links to the Court’s opinion, all the briefs and some of our earlier commentary about the case. Our focus will then shift to how the Court’s ruling is playing out in other cases around the country.

We want Warming Law to be a forum for sharing ideas, insights and strategies, and we want to emphasize the “share” part. If you are working on a global warming case and want to post an order or filing, please send it to us at [email protected]. If you think there’s something else that people who work on global warming litigation should know, send it or raise it in the comments.  For our part, we will try to pass on all the information we have or find about global warming cases, whether that is an observation in an original blog post, or a link to a newspaper article, court filing, another blog or some other source. And we’ll try to make it interesting, even fun at times, to read (but we’re lawyers, so keep your expectations in check).

“We” are attorneys at Community Rights Counsel (CRC) a public interest law firm that promotes constitutional principles to defend laws that make our communities environmentally sound and socially just. CRC represented local governments as amici in Massachusetts v. EPA, at both the petition for certiorari and merits stages of the case.

 

Comment policy:

We reserve the right to delete comments that are uncivil or that do not appear to be linked with a valid name and email address.

 

 

 

Comments

[Eric H. Zagrans]

We at SixthCircuitBlog welcome you to the blogosphere. We anticipate that Warming Law Blog will make a powerful and insightful contribution to raising the temperature of public response and enhancing the legal discourse on this most important issue. Best wishes.

[Tim Dowling]

Thanks very much, Eric!

[David F. Petrano Esq.]

Global Warming: A Lender's Duty to Disclose?

FACT:
(1) RAND Corporation has published numerous warnings regarding abrupt climate change since the 1980s. RAND publications are typically made available to large lending institutions, but not to the general public or typical real estate businesses.

True/False:
Many people would not have entered into a sub-prime mortgage agreement for coastal real property if their lender had disclosed abrupt climate change:
(1) was a distinct possibility;
(2) would likely trigger a downward value in their coastal real property.

True/False:
Mortgage lenders should be sued for "failure to disclose" by persons facing foreclosure by sub prime lenders who duped them into a mortgage by failing to disclose global warming was going to be a major factor in triggering a collapse in coastal real estate values.