In the next few years, the International Maritime Organization will create the world’s first greenhouse gas (GHG) pricing mechanism to reduce emissions from shipping. The United States may be unable to adopt it legislatively, repeating the events of the Kyoto Protocol. To ease passage, nations agreed to create the mechanism as an amendment to the existing Convention for the Prevention of Pollution From Ships (MARPOL), which a U.S. Secretary of State should be able to unilaterally accept or reject under the expedited amendment procedure of MARPOL’s implementing legislation.

State and local governments are contending with the challenge of “residual climate risk”—threats posed by private adaptation failures that endanger surrounding communities. While policy tools like municipal ordinances can help address this gap, enforcement challenges, budget constraints, and private-property rights often limit their effectiveness. Meanwhile, federal support for adaptation has significantly declined, forcing state and local governments to explore alternative approaches.

In contrast to the large amount of attention that FERC’s consideration of climate change in natural gas permitting has received, there has been relatively little paid to how FERC does and should consider climate change in hydropower permitting. This Comment fills a gap in the literature by analyzing how FERC considers climate change during permitting for hydropower projects.

In 2009, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) published what is commonly referred to as the “endangerment finding.” Prompted by the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark decision in Massachusetts v. Environmental Protection Agency (2007) and reflecting robust science, the finding determined that six key greenhouse gases qualify as air pollution under the Clean Air Act and pose a threat to the health and welfare of future generations.

The iron and steel sector contributes nearly 7% of global anthropogenic GHG emissions. As global climate commitments tighten and industrial decarbonization becomes urgent, green steel, produced using low-carbon alternatives such as green hydrogen and renewable electricity, has emerged as a potential solution. This Comment explores how national and international regulations are shaping the future of green steel, focusing on the interplay between climate policy and trade law.

There has been an influx of “climate superfund” bills introduced and adopted in state legislatures across the country. Modeled after the federal Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA), these laws are designed to recover costs from large emitters of greenhouse gases (GHGs) to pay for climate adaptation infrastructure.

Between January 2020 and March 2023, U.S. electronic cigarette sales grew 43%, from 15.6 million devices per month to 22.4 million devices. During this time frame, the portion of sales comprising disposable devices grew from 4 million to 11.9 million per month. The impact upon the environment has been largely overlooked by policymakers.

This Article calls on the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) to issue guidance clarifying that concurrent decommissioning is a “connected action” under the National Environmental Policy Act for relocation, managed retreat, and protect-in-place projects aimed at replacing infrastructure in environmentally threatened Alaska Native communities.

Little has been said on how the just transition to a decarbonized world relates to the human right, recently recognized by the United Nations General Assembly, to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment. This Article explores this relationship and how to build a framework that guides current and future climate change endeavors. It argues that the human right’s substantive and procedural content must incorporate just transition claims, which would help resolve whether and how to advocate for specific climate measures.

Combating climate change requires not only rapid reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, but also removal of significant amounts of carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere. CO2 removal (CDR) comes in many different forms, but climate scientists and policymakers are focusing on the potentially important role of large-scale use of emerging ocean-based techniques, often referred to as marine CDR (mCDR). In the United States, mCDR in domestic waters is governed by a patchwork of laws and regulations.