Climate Change and Sustainable Development Law in a Nutshell
Authors:
Nolon, John R. / Salkin, Patricia E.
Edition:
1st
Copyright Date:
2010
22 chapters
have results for Climate Change and Sustainable Development Law in a Nutshell
Foreword 18 results (showing 5 best matches)
- So what, exactly, is the law of sustainable development? Patricia Salkin and John Nolon provide a succinct and useful answer in this Nutshell. As one might expect, much of this law concerns climate change. Climate change is perhaps the single most obvious sustainable development problem, raising what my friend and colleague Don Brown describes as a “civilization challenging” issue. The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change is based on sustainable development, using sustainable development principles, concepts, and language. And most if not all of the laws that have been adopted thus far are intended to achieve multiple goals, including job creation, technology development, protection of the poor and businesses from high and rising fossil fuel prices, and (of course) reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.
- Widespread and growing environmental degradation and poverty mean that conventional development is not sustainable. This is particularly true for climate change, which is already warming the planet and contributing to poverty and even death in many developing countries. By definition, unsustainable development cannot last forever; sooner or later something will have to change.
- This is also a timely book. As clients in government, business, and nongovernmental organizations increasingly demand legal work that addresses sustainable development issues, lawyers and policymakers need to respond to that demand. This is particularly true of climate change, which will likely affect more clients in more ways than nearly any other single issue. And as clients seek to take their own steps to address climate change and sustainability, they increasingly expect their lawyers to have the knowledge and skills to advise and support them.
- The authors of this Nutshell have also included a set of other sustainable development topics where the law is relatively more advanced. These topics are green and energy-efficient buildings, transit oriented development, and green infrastructure. To be sure, laws in other fields also make strides toward sustainability. But the topics chosen represent many of the most sophisticated and widely used of the current laws that move toward sustainability, and thus provide a good introduction to the field.
- We urgently need lawyers to participate in the task of building a more sustainable society, reducing our greenhouse gas emissions, and adapting to the climate changes that are already occurring. This book is an important resource for beginning that task.
- Open Chapter
Preface 20 results (showing 5 best matches)
- The patterns of a more coherent framework of law can be observed in learning about the operations of each level of government and the close connections between sustainable development and climate change law. As these patterns become more evident and better understood, the prospect brightens for a robust and integrated system of international, federal, state, and local laws dedicated to sustainable development and climate change management.
- Policies regarding sustainable development and climate change management appeared on the world stage at the same time and should be studied and understood as a single body of law. Unfortunately, the trend in legal scholarship and teaching, if not in practice, is to see the two fields of law—sustainable development and climate change—as separate and distinct.
- Sustainable development law, on the other hand, focuses on shaping land and economic development to have a lighter impact on the environment, including, but not limited to climate change mitigation and adaptation. Sustainable development uses less material, avoids consuming wetlands or eroding watersheds, consumes less energy, emits less carbon dioxide (CO reduces ground and surface water pollution, and creates healthier places for living, working, and recreating. This body of law is created mainly by state and local governments, which have the principal legal authority to regulate building construction, land use, and the conservation of natural resources at the local level. It is guided, supported, and, sometimes, preempted by federal laws, regulations, and spending programs.
- The connection between sustainable land development and climate change mitigation and adaptation is particularly close. How buildings are constructed, how they are arranged on the land, and how human settlement patterns are shaped are critical to our success in curbing the causes of climate change. About 85 percent of GHG emissions in the U.S. are CO , much of which is caused by the buildings and land use patterns that local land use plans and regulations regulate and approve. Vehicle trips and miles travelled have increased dramatically in the past three decades as development patterns have spread out, consuming land at much greater rates than the rate of population growth. Today, buildings emit 35 percent of CO in the U.S. Personal vehicles are responsible for 17 percent of total emissions. Current undeveloped landscapes sequester 15 percent of CO emissions. All told, where we build and how we build relates directly to over 66 percent of net CO ...in the U.S. The U.S. Census Bureau...
- This Nutshell pieces together the international, federal, state, and local influences that connect these two related fields of legal study and practice. After detailing the historical, scientific, and legal background and current federal laws, regulations, and cases, the book turns to an examination of state and local law and action. Several chapters of this book examine how state and local governments foster sustainable patterns of growth, energy efficient and sustainable developments and neighborhoods, the use of renewable energy resources, the protection of sequestering open space, and the adaptation of buildings and communities to sea level rise and fiercer storm events.
- Open Chapter
Chapter One. Historical, Scientific, and Legal Background 119 results (showing 5 best matches)
- This Nutshell brings the legal system that fosters sustainable development and that manages climate change between the covers of a single book. It explores the close connection between climate change and land development. In the last section of this chapter, we briefly trace the connection between land development and climate change mitigation in the U.S. As this book progresses, we keep the focus on U.S. law and trace the contours of a national legal system that can be seen as a framework of its own: one that achieves energy conservation, promotes renewable sources of energy, organizes the conservation of coastal areas, establishes links between housing, transportation, and environmental policy, and one within which laws are emerging that promote sustainable neighborhoods, transit oriented development, and sequestration of CO
- In the Preface to this Nutshell, we explained that policies regarding sustainable development and climate change management appeared on the world stage at the same time and should be studied and understood as a single body of law. We noted that when the concept of sustainability attained currency at the international level it embodied both the forces of economic development and environmental protection, which explicitly included climate change mitigation. It is not immediately apparent from the above review of the UNFCCC, the Kyoto Protocol, and the Copenhagen Accord how climate change law and policy are embodied within the broader policies of sustainable development law. This lack of connection appears in most of the books available for the study of climate change in law schools and other professional academies. In order to make this critical connection, it is necessary to return to Rio and its predecessor—the U.N.’s Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment held in 1972.
- The advantage of coupling climate change and sustainable development lawmaking is evident in the examples of laws emerging in various countries set forth immediately above. Federal, state, and local laws such as these and the framework law recommended by UNEP suggest that top-down laws, policies, and programs are not, by themselves, up to the task of managing highly complex, multifaceted problems such as climate change and sustainable development. Framework laws connect the vertical and horizontal planes in our legal system: stitching together the initiatives at the federal, state, and local level—the vertical dimension—and the initiatives created at each separate level—the horizontal dimension.
- The 1987 report of the World Commission on the Environment and Development (discussed in more detail in the Preface to this Nutshell) set the stage for the first significant meeting of world leaders on sustainable development five years later in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The Commission’s report, , noted the new evidence of climate change and indicated that it, along with other types of environmental damage, should be mitigated if development is to be sustainable. More specifically, the Commission wrote, “There has been a growing realization in national governments and multilateral institutions that it is impossible to separate economic development issues from environmental issues; many forms of development erode the environmental resources upon which they must be based, and environmental degradation can undermine economic development.”
- These notions urge us to pay attention to connections among levels of government because together they constitute the relevant system within which change must occur to deal with external crises such as the consequences of climate change. The larger system relevant to adopting sustainable development strategies to manage climate change comprises the local, state and federal governments and constituent civic and private sector stakeholders. The task at hand, as climate change worsens, is to design a cogent legal system that comprises all of these relevant parts.
- Open Chapter
Chapter Seven. Green Buildings and Sites 82 results (showing 5 best matches)
- The emerging practice of green building law illustrates how climate change mitigation fits within the field of sustainable development. A sustainable building that uses less water and consumes less energy, for example, is one that has adapted to the realities of climate change. A world changed by an altered climate requires that we use less potable water in times of drought, conserve limited energy resources, and reduce CO emissions. We can use laws and incentives for green buildings either as a method of mitigating climate change or adapting to it.
- Developing energy efficient buildings, the subject of the previous chapter, is an important tactic in an overall sustainable development strategy. Energy efficient buildings use less energy and emit less carbon dioxide (CO ). There is much more that can be done at the scale of the individual building, however, to further the cause of sustainable development and to mitigate and adapt to climate change.
- Over the course of the last few decades, states and local governments have begun to require public and publicly-funded buildings to be green by adopting any number of sustainable development standards. Gradually, some local governments also began requiring or encouraging new and renovated privately developed buildings to meet a variety of sustainable development standards. Prior to the mid–2000s, the evidence of local legislative action in this arena was sparse. Today, one can find hundreds of local laws that require or encourage green buildings and they offer countless models and options for other localities to emulate.
- Rating systems, such as LEED, award points for this kind of site design and natural resource preservation. ASHRAE Standard 189.1 does as well. Recently, a rating system has emerged that establishes and is testing standards for sustainable site development. This system, called The Sustainable Sites Initiative (known as SITES) was developed by the American Society of Landscape Architects. It incorporates 15 prerequisites for site certification and awards over 50 credits for sustainable design regarding water, soils, materials, and vegetation, adding up to 250 possible points to be earned. Depending on the number of points garnered by a project, it may be awarded from one to four stars under this Initiative. SITES is intended to work in conjunction with green building standards, such as LEED.
- Second, the process that the ICC followed in formulating this new code complies with the process required in Circular A–199 of the federal Office of Management and Budget regarding the development of voluntary codes. Compliance with this federal circular qualifies standards for use and adoption at the federal level. That process involved the creation of a Sustainable Building Technology Committee, a broad based group of professionals representing the full range of disciplines and technologies implicated in sustainable building. Importantly, several critical groups were represented on this committee including the USGBC, whose logo appears on the cover of the IGCC, the Green Building Initiative, and the EPA.
- Open Chapter
Appendix. Internet Guide to Climate Change & Sustainable Development Research 91 results (showing 5 best matches)
- Pace University School of Law
- Center for International Sustainable Development Law
- is an organization of professional planners that promotes sound planning practices and policies. They have adopted a number of sustainable policy guides and offer training and resources on sustainable development, climate change and land use law.
- Environmental Law and Climate Change Law Blog
- Sturm College of Law
- Open Chapter
Chapter Six. Energy Efficient Buildings 73 results (showing 5 best matches)
- In the next several chapters, we explore the historical and fundamental role of local governments in other aspects of sustainable development and climate change management. These governments are using their local prerogatives to facilitate green buildings, adding other sustainable development objectives to that of energy conservation. They are fostering green, or sustainable, neighborhoods, furthering renewal energy facilities, protecting sequestering resources, adapting to sea level rise, and becoming more resilient to the effects of climate change. These horizontal connections among various local strategies provide an integrated, if parochial, context for climate change management. How they fit into the overarching state and federal system is a persistent question that challenges policymakers in these critical times.
- Local land use laws such as zoning, subdivision, and site plan regulations can achieve extraordinary energy efficiency by permitting and encouraging the use of combined heat and power (CHP) systems in individual buildings and interconnected energy systems in certain mixed use districts. By employing CHP, a mechanical system that can be used to produce electricity, heat or both, in a higher density, mixed use neighborhood, the potential for energy efficiency, and therefore energy conservation and climate change mitigation, is exponentially greater than if used on an individual parcel. This type of system is referred to as a district energy system, or DES, and is explored further in Chapter Eight of this Nutshell.
- and climate change mitigation objectives. Others are explained elsewhere in this Nutshell. As the discussion in this section indicates, however, we seem to be rethinking the role of the federal government in aiding, guiding, or even preempting state and local authority over achieving energy efficiency in existing buildings. This policy confusion is evident in other realms of climate change management, as well. What is clear is that all levels of government are needed. Each has resources, capacities, and knowledge that are important and all of these critical resources should be carefully coordinated.
- State legislatures delegate land use authority to local governments as part of their police power, that is, their legal authority to legislate to protect the health, safety, and welfare of the people. Zoning enabling acts adopted by state legislatures routinely state that local land use regulations may be adopted to achieve the “appropriate use of the land.” Local land use regulations that govern land development to reduce energy use and mitigate climate change are consistent with these key precepts of the enabling acts. Quite often, enabling acts state that they are to be broadly construed and, increasingly, courts interpret them expansively if the challenged law is clearly designed to protect the public interest. Challenges brought against local land use laws that are designed to conserve energy and mitigate climate change might be based on claims (that the law exceeds the authority of the locality) or on the claim that the matter is preempted by federal or state law. Given our...
- A similar approach is followed by Seattle, Washington, which promotes green residential development through the use of Energy Star, among other third party standards. Rather than mandating compliance, Seattle promotes use of these enhanced standards by providing homeowners with information and links to each of these programs on its Climate Action Now website—a central clearinghouse for information and activities related to climate change mitigation. The city also promotes Energy Star through its City Green Building Program, under which the Department of Planning and Development assists homeowners and builders interested in using green building technology for construction and remodeling projects.
- Open Chapter
Chapter Eight. Green Neighborhoods and Transit Oriented Development 88 results (showing 5 best matches)
- These examples of green development on the neighborhood level illustrate the integration of sustainable development principles into local plans, budgets, and zoning laws; the encouragement of neighborhood-wide sustainable planning and development by state legislatures; and the development of independent standards by third party experts at the national level that help localities integrate climate change mitigation, energy conservation, and other environmental benefits in an increasingly comprehensive strategy.
- As threats from climate change begin to manifest themselves, a few things become clear. Remediation measures must be a comprehensive endeavor, focused on uniting efforts of the local government, building owners, local employers, and community groups. Communities that lack meaningful public participation, affordable housing, or a strong work force, put their members at greater risk from suffering the economic and environmental burdens of climate change. Weaving social equity principles into the community fabric is a necessary measure toward achieving true sustainable development and effectively responding to the threats of climate change.
- Low-income neighborhoods are susceptible to gentrification pressures as wealthier residents and developers seek to capitalize on the growing desirability of urban areas characterized by disinvestment and low property values. To address these inequities, climate change strategies need to incorporate mechanisms to ensure that the burdens and benefits of climate change mitigation strategies are equitably distributed. Sustainable development, accordingly, should encourage the cleanup of polluting industries, facilities, and brownfields located in and near disadvantaged communities. It should also help to bring economic development to these areas, to improve housing opportunities, limit gentrification, and provide green jobs.
- In this chapter, we examine sustainable development and climate change management issues at the neighborhood level. Chapters Six and Seven dealt with matters at the scale of the individual building: the energy efficiency and sustainability of individual buildings and their sites. Here, we connect buildings and sites to their immediate surroundings. It is in neighborhoods that a sense of place emerges, that the architectural history of a community is evident, that the physical environment achieves some scale, and that infrastructure and social services are efficiently provided. At this scale, one can observe the shadows that buildings cast, the run-off that pavement and drainage systems cause, the neighbors coming and going, and the excitement of a dynamic, revitalizing area.
- In the context of climate change, the social equality component of sustainability must incorporate environmental justice (EJ) principles. The U.S. EPA defines the core principles of environmental justice as “the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of race, color, national origin, or income with respect to the development, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies.” EJ recognizes that the economic and environmental burdens of climate change fall disproportionately on minority and low income communities. Indeed, African Americans are responsible for nearly 20 percent less emissions per capita than non-Hispanic whites, and, as so vividly illustrated by Hurricane Katrina, low-income and minority communities are impacted especially hard by storms, floods, fires, and other natural hazards exacerbated by climate change.
- Open Chapter
Chapter Two. The Federal, State, and Local Legal Systems 76 results (showing 5 best matches)
- As mentioned in Chapter One, sustainable development is an international challenge and it demands the attention of all levels of government in the U.S.—from a federal regulatory framework to statutes and regulations adopted at the state level to local laws and ordinances enacted at the municipal level. Although the U.S has yet to adopt a comprehensive national climate change policy, sustainable development and emissions reductions strategies are being implemented through a variety of initiatives at each level of government. While the complex interactions between these laws may sometimes be redundant or frustrating, a search for a preeminent authority or leading approach to sustainable development issues will fail to yield an easy answer.
- Federal jurisdiction over climate change issues is limited, both constitutionally and practically; there are certain distances beyond which Congress cannot or will not travel to address sustainable development interests. Many legislative proposals have been introduced in Congress over the last several years under the moniker of climate change, sustainable development, and livable communities. To date, however, none have been enacted. Despite this legislative delay, in October 2009, President Obama issued Executive Order 13514 on federal leadership in environmental, energy, and economic performance. It directed each federal agency to establish a greenhouse gas (GHG) inventory, measure and report its emissions, and establish a 2020 percentage reduction target. In implementing the order, agencies were specifically directed to consider reducing energy use in buildings, increasing use of renewables, and reducing petroleum consumption through fleet optimization and conversion to...
- An ideal framework of laws created to manage climate change through sustainable development should integrate and leverage the competencies and resources of the federal, state, and local levels of government, as well as the private sector. It should be reflexive, creating connections among the many disciplines, sectors, interest groups, resources, and knowledge bases relevant to the complexities of the task of climate change management. While top-down mandates or prohibitions may be appropriate to address some climate change issues, such as vehicle emissions, frameworks that are able to accommodate unique local circumstances and innovations should be encouraged as part of the national legal system to coordinate governmental roles in land use control and environmental protection. As with the CZMA and the DMA, regulations can be integrated through multi-level legislative approaches that link separate but related land use issues and mediate the tensions among federal supremacy, states’...
- Significantly, the Executive Order also directed agencies to participate in regional transportation planning, align their policies with sustainable local planning laws, consider transit oriented development planning for new federal facilities, include GHG analyses in environmental impact statements, and coordinate with regional programs for federal, state, tribal, and local environmental management. By emphasizing cooperation among different levels of government, the order acknowledged that climate change mitigation and adaptation cannot be accomplished by Congressional fiat alone; tribal, state, and local governments are necessary partners in forming successful plans to reduce GHG emissions and prepare for climate change impacts.
- A cooperative approach to climate change regulation, in addition to integrating the influences of multiple levels of government, would involve the private actors who are affected by governmental regulation and whose engagement is necessary to achieve policy objectives. By embracing the reform of local land use plans and regulations, climate change policymakers incorporate the entire apparatus of local land use law decision-making in the administration of state and federal initiatives. The local land use legal system relies on work sessions of the legislative body, open meetings, public notices of pending legislation and project reviews, public hearings, local agency review of regulated projects, and the right to challenge adopted laws and approved projects in the courts: a full spectrum of opportunities for public and stakeholder engagement. Federal and state policies that encourage localities to adopt climate action plans, for example, will involve, inform, and stimulate the larger...
- Open Chapter
Acknowledgments 4 results
- We thank our families, colleagues, students, research assistants, and law schools for their support over the last decade as we have developed and pursued a research agenda demonstrating how climate change can be managed by, and the many other benefits that are derived from, sustainable development law and policies.
- We acknowledge the complexity and fast-paced development of the many legal subjects brought together and organized between the covers of this small book. Climate Change and Sustainable Development Law comprises international, federal, state, regional, and local law, and substantive matters explored in the teaching and practice of environmental, land use, energy, transportation, housing, urban development, and real estate law. The effort to understand it all is just beginning and we look forward to the reactions of and suggestions from our readers.
- Those who study and write about the changing nature of our natural world have paved the way for this book and its effort to view comprehensively the legal strategies that one encounters in studying and practicing sustainable development law. These scientists, scholars, and journalists have catalogued the consequences of climate change and resource depletion and created interested and concerned readers who want to know all the tools at hand to solve the problems that unsustainable development causes. There is a rapidly growing group of students and graduates who recognize that we must chart a more sustainable course for the future to ensure the longer term viability of the natural environment that supports us and our economy.
- Special thanks to the following people who worked with us to produce this Nutshell: Jennie C. Nolon, staff attorney at the Land Use Law Center of Pace Law School; Amy Lavine, staff attorney at the Government Law Center of Albany Law School; and Michael J. Goonan, Research Scholar at the Land Use Law Center. Also, thank you to Katherine Rosenberg and Michelle Monforte of the Government Law Center for their administrative assistance.
- Open Chapter
Chapter Three. Federal Policy, Regulation, and Markets 103 results (showing 5 best matches)
- The early failure of federal policy to draw a clear connection between sustainable development and energy issues domestically is observable at the international level as well. The 1992 Rio Accord, Agenda 21, tangentially referenced the importance of using energy sources more efficiently and principally concentrated on energy use in the transportation sector. By 2002, the Johannesburg World Summit on Sustainable Development sharpened this focus by including strong recommendations regarding the consideration of energy efficiency and renewable measures in international, national, and state policy. Federal law evolved during this same period to provide greater emphasis on sustainability and climate change in energy law.
- An important step in this direction is taken by the Partnership for Sustainable Communities, which is a 2009 initiative among DOT, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), and the EPA. Through this partnership, these three agencies agreed to integrate the provision of affordable housing, more transportation options at lower costs, and greater environmental protection in order to create “livable communities.” Through a set of agreed-upon principles, these three agencies will coordinate federal housing, transportation, and other infrastructure investments to promote sustainable development: equitable development that addresses the challenge of climate change.
- In Chapter Eight, we point out the close relationship between transit oriented, compact, mixed use development and climate change mitigation. This type of sustainable development is a critical path toward climate change mitigation because the per capita carbon emissions of residents of such neighborhoods is significantly less than the emissions of those who reside in less dense areas not served by transit. These lower emissions are due to the fact that residents of neighborhoods with transit services drive less often over shorter distances and that they live and work in more energy efficient buildings than residents of lower density, single-family neighborhoods not served by transit.
- While direct action on emissions reduction is pending, there is much that Congress has done regarding other environmental, energy, transportation, and housing matters that manage the causes and consequences of climate change and promote sustainable development. In response to these legislative actions, federal agencies have issued rules and regulations, and litigants have engaged federal courts, which have opined on the issues raised. These actions at the national level offer much to examine in this chapter and establish the national context for future initiatives. First, we review the impressive early leadership of the U.S. on research, intergovernmental cooperation, and international agreements regarding climate change that helped set the stage for the 1992 Rio Accords, including the UNFCCC.
- In this chapter, we turn to the laws, regulations, policies, and decisions of Congress, the Executive Branch, and the federal courts regarding sustainable development and climate change. At the date of this publication, there is very little to report from Congress on the much-debated cap-and-trade proposals, carbon taxation, or other aggressive federal statutes aimed directly at reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Legislation on these matters would conform U.S. legislative policy to the tenets of the Kyoto Protocol and the Copenhagen Accord discussed in Chapter One. Some commentators suggest that the failure of the U.S. to ratify the Kyoto Protocol and the inability of Congress to establish and enforce strict emission standards will seriously hinder future global progress under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
- Open Chapter
About the Authors 3 results
- Professors Nolon and Salkin
- is James D. Hopkins Professor of Law at Pace University School of Law, Counsel to its Land Use Law Center, and Director of its Kheel Center on the Resolution of Environmental Interest Disputes. He is the author of twelve books and fifty articles on land use and sustainable development law, served as a Fulbright Scholar on Sustainable Development in Argentina, and has been Visiting Professor of Environmental Law at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies since 2001.
- is the Raymond & Ella Smith Distinguished Professor of Law at Albany Law School where she also serves as Associate Dean and directs the Government Law Center. Salkin is the author of the five-volume American Law of Zoning, 5th ed. (Thomson West) and the four-volume New York Zoning Law and Practice, 4th ed. (Thomson West), as well as numerous articles, columns, chapters, books and casebooks focused on land use law, community development, and sustainability.
- Open Chapter
Title Page 4 results
Outline 112 results (showing 5 best matches)
- 5. Conclusion: Climate Change and Sustainable Development Law
- 2. Sustainable Development and Climate Change
- 4. Sustainable Development and Climate Change Management
- Appendix. Internet Guide to Climate Change & Sustainable Development Research
- 2. Source and Nature of Municipal Authority to Enact Climate Change Laws
- Open Chapter
Chapter Four. State and Regional Climate Change Policy and Regulation 86 results (showing 5 best matches)
- In the absence of federal leadership over the past decade, state governments have grown impatient and have acted independently to control greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. State-level climate change and sustainable development initiatives have been created by executive and legislative actions, some mandatory and others aspirational or incentive-based, and they have included regional partnerships, state regulations, and the development of wide-ranging strategic plans. The following sections highlight some of these programs and initiatives.
- As discussed in more detail in Chapters Six and Seven, buildings that accomplish multiple sustainable objectives have become known as green buildings. Such structures are not only energy efficient, but they accomplish one or more additional sustainable development objectives. Green buildings employ construction techniques, building designs, and operational systems that save water, reduce lighting needs, use recycled materials, or create a more healthful indoor environment, for example. They also incorporate renewable energy sources such as individual building solar systems and wind turbines. Obviously, there are various shades of green buildings; ranging from those that incorporate one or two green features, to highly sustainable buildings that truly respond to the urgent need for a more sustainable world.
- As discussed in Chapter Eight, sustainable neighborhood development is integral to efforts to reduce vehicle miles traveled and preserve open space. While land use planning laws promoting pedestrian and transit oriented design are generally enacted at the local level, the states can influence and encourage municipalities to adopt these types of regulations through their comprehensive planning enabling acts.
- The recommendations included in a state-level climate action plan may pertain to state government management practices, such as commitments to convert state vehicle fleets to hybrid or low-emission fuel vehicles or to require state building and renovation projects to meet green building standards. Other recommendations usually propose loan, grant, tax abatement, or incentive programs to encourage individuals and corporations to adopt sustainable development practices. Increased funding may also be recommended for certain state programs, and suggestions often propose legislative actions, such as enacting appliance efficiency standards (which states may do up until the time that a federal standard becomes effective), adopting California’s vehicle emissions standards, establishing renewable portfolio standards, requiring electric utilities to offer net metering, and authorizing pay-as-you-drive auto insurance. These types of initiatives are discussed later in this chapter.
- Additionally, some statutes address water conservation comprehensive plan elements. As with natural hazards, water conservation issues will become more important in many states due to decreased rainfall and winter snow pack caused by climate change. In Arizona, cities and counties must include in their comprehensive plans a water resources element that addresses:
- Open Chapter
Chapter Five. Local Climate Action Plans, Sustainability, and Comprehensive Planning 78 results (showing 5 best matches)
- (ICLEI–Local Governments for Sustainability), an international association that promotes smart planning, sustainable development and the implementation of initiatives focused on slowing global warming. ICLEI was formed in 1990 and has worked to provide technical consulting, training, and information services to support and encourage local climate change initiatives. Over 1,200 cities across the globe have become ICLEI members.
- As discussed in Chapter Four, some states have enacted either mandatory or optional comprehensive planning provisions relating to energy conservation and sustainable development. However, even without state guidance, local governments are increasingly using their comprehensive plans to respond to climate change threats by incorporating plans to conserve important environmental resources, reduce GHG emissions, and prepare for changing weather patterns. Comprehensive plans, which have been common local government planning documents for nearly a century, present a familiar and convenient format for local governments to incorporate sustainability concerns into their long-term plans.
- The previous sections of this chapter have discussed a variety of specific local government sustainability programs. However, serious efforts to address climate change require broad-based, long-term, multi-sector approaches. To develop such plans, local governments have primarily turned to existing comprehensive planning frameworks, climate action plans, or both. However it is done, incorporating climate change concerns into sustainability plans offers local governments an opportunity to conduct “green audits” of their local plans and laws. For example, local governments can determine whether local regulations encourage the use of solar, small building-based wind turbines and green or white roofs, or whether such energy efficient measures would be difficult to accomplish in a streamlined review process. In addition, municipalities can audit zoning ordinances to determine whether, for example, mixed-use and planned development districts that encourage new urbanism techniques leading...
- Building on these assessments, Cleveland was able to develop a menu of sustainability policies and strategies. These broad policies support sustainable development patterns and practices, sustainable economic patterns, green building, non-motorized and mass transit, energy conservation, renewable energy, brownfields remediation, recycling and waste management, and air quality improvement. Some of the more specific land use and planning techniques recommended by the city to promote the goals of the Sustainable Cleveland plan include: innovative and flexible zoning districts (e.g., live-work overlay districts and pedestrian retail overlay districts), a downtown surface parking lot ban, suitably proportioned urban lot sizes, the incorporation of transit oriented design into the site review process, a draft city bikeway plan, a program to install bike racks and street benches, green building training for building inspectors, development incentives (especially for infill), and a housing...
- The 2007 update of the Marin, California, Countywide Plan was developed using a framework for sustainability that focuses on three central themes: environment, the economy, and social equity. Unlike local governments that have focused on a single climate change element, Marin County incorporated sustainability provisions throughout the plan. The plan also puts emphasis on program implementation and benchmarking guidelines, setting out priorities for particular actions and metrics by which to measure success. Some of the plan’s strategies relating to climate change include: lowering GHG emissions by encouraging alternative transportation methods and technologies; protecting forests and other natural carbon sinks; using energy efficient building techniques by emphasizing renewable energy; reducing methane emissions from landfills; encouraging agricultural operations to adopt methane recovery technology; evaluating carbon emissions during the land use approval process; directing
- Open Chapter
Chapter Eleven. Sea Level Rise Adaptation and Resiliency 104 results (showing 5 best matches)
- The state created the Office of Climate Change, within the Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC), to take the lead in the development of programs and policies to mitigate greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and to help communities and residents adapt to the effects of climate change. These goals will be met through the following avenues of action: GHG mitigation programs, an inventory of emissions, an evaluation of GHG reducing technologies, partnering with both public and private entities throughout New York to introduce a climate change element into their decision making processes, and to keep the public informed on how they can help battle climate change.
- New York City has taken significant steps to address the threat of sea level rise around the metropolitan region. There is a citywide strategic planning process for climate change adaptation, including adaptation to sea level rise. In 2008, Mayor Bloomberg launched the Climate Change Adaptation Task Force and the New York City Panel on Climate Change to develop adaptation strategies to secure the city’s infrastructure from the effects of climate change. The Task Force is one of the 127 initiatives proposed in PlaNYC, the city’s long-term sustainability plan.
- The New York City Panel on Climate Change, modeled on the IPCC, will advise the Task Force. The Panel will develop a unified set of climate change projections; draft protection levels to guide the design of new infrastructure; and produce a technical report on the localized effects of climate change on the city.
- As local governments enact no-build zones or other strategies that effectively prevent development on vulnerable private land, the case presents a formidable barrier, at least for the present. This suggests that local strategies emphasize land acquisition, transfers of development rights, or regulations that restrict, rather than prevent, building. Eventually, federal and state policies—and perhaps even the Supreme Court’s regulatory takings jurisprudence—may be altered by the projected changes in our climate and its impact on coastal properties.
- Under Oregon’s statewide planning program, the Land Conservation and Development Commission initially adopts the state’s planning goals and rules, and approves comprehensive plans adopted by local governments in conformance with the state regulations. The State of Oregon claims ownership of the Pacific shore “between ordinary high tide and extreme low tide, and from the Oregon and Washington state line on the north to the Oregon and California state line on the south.” The state maintains a right of public access to the dry sand beach, finding that the public’s “frequent and uninterrupted use of the ocean shore” since the nineteenth century has created a perpetual easement for public recreational use up to a statutory or established vegetation line—an easement that has been upheld by the courts. The governor has established an Office of Climate Change, which with Oregon Sea Grant is preparing a report to the Legislature on climate change.
- Open Chapter
Chapter Ten. Sequestration 107 results (showing 5 best matches)
- Climate change mitigation strategies should focus, firstly, on maintaining or increasing forested areas and, secondly, on increasing the carbon density within these districts. The optimal approaches to mitigation are to prevent development from eliminating forests and to impose sustainable management conditions on the forest industry: best practices that maintain and increase forest carbon stocks. Effective forest management activities include harvest systems that partially maintain forest cover, minimize losses of dead organic matter, reduce soil erosion, and require planting after harvest.
- Local environmental law is based on state-delegated land use authority, home rule power, and discrete state enabling laws, many of relatively recent vintage. These state statutes recognize the importance of local governments in preventing water and air pollution, the disappearance of wetlands, soil erosion, surface water sedimentation, viewshed degradation, and a number of other adverse impacts of development that threaten the quality of community life. Increasingly, these adverse impacts are understood to include climate change, so that local environmental law now embraces strategies that manage climate change, including the preservation and expansion of sequestering resources.
- The takings jurisprudence of the U.S. Supreme Court teaches that land use regulations may go too far in limiting the use of land, restricting property rights so onerously that they become takings. This is to say that certain regulations can so encumber the use of land that they are treated as if the local government had condemned the land for a public purpose. In such cases, which are rare, the locality is required to provide the affected landowner with just compensation, or to rescind the regulation and pay damages up to that point. This topic is explored in Chapter Eleven of the Nutshell where it arises in the dramatic context of local land use restrictions that prevent development in areas subject to inundation by rising sea levels caused by climate change.
- In local zoning and subdivision regulations, standards that prevent the disturbance of soils and vegetation on development sites have similar effects. The emerging field of low impact development experiments with adding surface vegetation near buildings and green roofs on them in urban projects and, in developing suburbs, using vegetated swales to replace curbs and gutters for storm water control, cluster development, tree retention, and retaining natural vegetation on site during and after construction. Local wetlands regulation, seen though the lens of climate change mitigation, offers the additional benefit of carbon sequestration since most wetlands have been undisturbed by previous development.
- The Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) held in 2001 in Bonn, Germany resulted in an agreement regarding Land Use, Land Use Change and Forestry (LULUCF). At the global scale, land use and land-cover change (LULCC) is responsible for releasing GHGs to the atmosphere, thereby driving climate change. LULCC can increase the release of CO to the atmosphere by disturbance of terrestrial soils and vegetation; the major driver of this change is deforestation, especially when followed by agriculture, which causes the further release of soil carbon in response to disturbance by tillage. Changes in land use and land cover are also behind major changes in terrestrial emissions of other GHGs, especially methane (from altered surface hydrology; wetland drainage, and cattle grazing) and nitrous oxide (from the use of inorganic nitrogen fertilizers; cultivation of nitrogen fixing plants; and biomass combustion). The Conference of the Parties
- Open Chapter
Copyright Page 3 results
- Nutshell Series, In a Nutshell
- Thomson Reuters created this publication to provide you with accurate and authoritative information concerning the subject matter covered. However, this publication was not necessarily prepared by persons licensed to practice law in a particular jurisdiction. Thomson Reuters does not render legal or other professional advice, and this publication is not a substitute for the advice of an attorney. If you require legal or other expert advice, you should seek the services of a competent attorney or other professional.
- Printed in the United States of America
- Open Chapter
Chapter Nine. Renewable Energy: Wind, Solar, and Beyond 47 results (showing 5 best matches)
- New Mexico’s Solar Recordation Act allows a property owner with a solar energy system to record an easement for sun access, defined by the statute as 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. on the winter solstice. A new law in New Jersey exempts solar panels from zoning limitations on impervious cover (i.e., driveways, buildings, and other surfaces that prevent water from absorbing into the ground). The law specifically applies to the various laws relating to municipal land use, stormwater management, waterfront and coastal development, the Pinelands, and the Highlands, including agricultural development therein. The new law also defines “solar panel” as “an elevated panel or plate, or a canopy or array thereof, that captures and converts solar radiation to produce power, and includes flat plate, focusing solar collectors, or photovoltaic solar cells and excludes
- Wind energy is one of the cleanest and most environmentally neutral energy sources in the world today, and it is available in abundance in many states. Compared to conventional fossil fuel energy sources, wind energy generation does not degrade the quality of our air and water and can make important contributions to reducing climate-change effects and meeting national energy security goals. The economic benefits of wind power have, until recently, been outweighed by the prohibitive cost of wind energy generation as compared to other energy sources. The gap, however, is beginning to close, with prices for wind energy per kilowatt hour falling from around eighty cents or more in the early 1980s to between six and nine cents today. According to the U.S Department of Energy, there are enough wind resources in the U.S. to generate electricity for every home and business in the nation. Several Midwestern states, including but not limited to parts of Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota,...and
- Municipal laws relating to solar energy have been in place for years in sunny states like California, Arizona, and Florida. As solar panels have become more commonplace in less ideal climates, solar ordinances have also begun to be enacted in communities in the northeast to ensure that solar energy systems are used appropriately. Historically, solar panel ordinances enacted by local governments tended to regulate these uses for aesthetic and safety reasons. Today, municipalities are enacting programs designed to incentivize the use of solar energy, and zoning ordinances and land use regulations similarly permit their use. Most local governments require at least an electrical permit for the installation of rooftop solar panels. Building permits, design review, or other planning approvals ..., historic district regulations, and maximum height limits may impose further restrictions on solar panels. Ground-mounted solar energy systems may be subject to additional... ...sizes and setbacks...
- The Renewable Energy Development Plan in Austin, Texas suggests that zoning laws should encourage builders to orient homes and other buildings for maximum sun exposure during the winter, and minimum exposure during the summer. In addition, it requires the city-owned utility to investigate and adopt technology for generating renewable energy sources, and it suggests that new building codes regulations require contractors to include renewable energy technology in buildings and install energy efficient heating and cooling systems.
- Under Wisconsin law, municipalities can only restrict solar and wind energy systems to protect the public health or safety. An appellate court, interpreting the state provision, held in Ecker Bros. v. Calumet County, 321 Wis.2d 51, 772 N.W.2d 240 (Wis.App. 2009), that a county could not enact across-the-board restrictions for wind energy systems; rather, the court determined that “political subdivisions must rely on the facts of an individual situation to make case-by-case restrictions.” The Supreme Court of Washington applied its state siting law to a wind power project in Residents Opposed to Kittitas Turbines v. State Energy Facility Site Evaluation Council, 165 Wash.2d 275, 197 P.3d 1153 (Wash. 2008). In Washington, state permits preempt local restrictions on energy facilities, but regulations in force when the facts of the case arose required an energy project applicant to make all reasonable efforts to resolve noncompliance with local laws. The court held that preemption in...
- Open Chapter
Index 152 results (showing 5 best matches)
- Climate Change Impacts in the United States
- FOUNDATION PRINCIPLES REGARDING IMPORTANCE OF SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT,
- INTERNATIONAL NEGOTIATING COMMITTEE FOR A FRAMEWORK CONVENTION ON CLIMATE CHANGE,
- THE JOHANNESBURG WORLD SUMMIT ON SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT OF 2002,
- MANITOBA SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT ACT OF 1997,
- Open Chapter
Advisory Board 12 results (showing 5 best matches)
- Professor of Law, Chancellor and Dean Emeritus, Hastings College of the Law
- Dean and Professor of Law, Stanford Law School
- Professor of Law and Dean Emeritus,
- Professor of Law, Michael E. Moritz College of Law,
- Professor of Law, University of San Diego Professor of Law Emeritus, University of Michigan
- Open Chapter
- Publication Date: November 24th, 2010
- ISBN: 9780314264206
- Subject: Environmental Law
- Series: Nutshells
- Type: Overviews
- Description: Policies regarding sustainable development and climate change management appeared on the world stage at the same time and should be studied and understood as a single body of law. This Nutshell enables readers to learn how the U.S. legal system fosters greenhouse gas reduction, energy conservation, and sustainable patterns of growth including energy efficient and sustainable buildings, the use of renewable energy resources, the protection of sequestering open space, and the adaptation of buildings and communities to sea level rise and natural disasters.
