To commemorate Earth Day, Paul Hastings LLP hosted a panel discussion on April 18, 2017, featuring three prominent attorneys with extensive and diverse experience in environmental counseling and litigation. The panelists reflected on the transition to the Trump Administration and what it might mean for long-standing issues of federalism, globalization, private environmental governance, and enforcement and compliance. Here, we present a transcript of the discussion, which has been edited for style, clarity, and space considerations.

For centuries, hybridization was a poorly understood process thought to be a threat to endangered species. With the advent of genomic technologies, those views are starting to change; hybridization is now recognized as vital for the formation and continued persistence of many species. However, our current system of protection under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) fails to take many of the modern nuances of evolutionary biology into consideration. Despite calls for an explicit “hybrid policy” since the early 1990s, the U.S.

Decarbonizing the U.S. energy system will require a program of building onshore wind, offshore wind, utility-scale solar, and associated transmission that will exceed what has been done before in the United States by many times, every year out to 2050. These facilities, together with rooftop photovoltaics and other distributed generation, are required to replace most fossil fuel generation and to help furnish the added electricity that will be needed as many uses currently employing fossil fuels (especially passenger transportation and space and water heating) are electrified.

Commensurate with its significant environmental problems, China’s environmental protection laws and court system have undergone profound changes in the past two years. In this Comment, the authors highlight the development and implementation of China’s environmental public interest litigation system, which shifts the legal paradigm from tort suits to recover damages incurred by pollution victims to cases that more closely resemble U.S. citizen suits.

The year 2016 witnessed the adoption or revision of several of China’s environmental laws by the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress, as well as some major judicial initiatives by the Supreme People’s Court. This Comment summarizes these developments.

Since at least 1987, when the World Commission on Environment and Development published Our Common Future, sustainability has become an increasingly central concept in redefining environmental stewardship—development that "meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs." The march toward realizing the ideal of more responsible stewardship of the earth’s natural resources continues to advance, notwithstanding dramatic changes in the political landscape.

On January 25, 2017, during his first week in office, President Donald Trump signed an Executive Order calling for the “immediate construction of a physical wall on the southern border” of the United States. Such a wall would span more than one thousand miles, across many different habitats and many different communities. Before a wall can be built, numerous questions must be answered: Which environmental laws apply? How might all this work?

Recent scientific research indicates fugitive methane emissions from abandoned oil and gas wells may contribute more to climate change than methane leakage from oil and gas production. Yet current orphaned well regulations fail to ensure that such wells are plugged in a timely fashion. This Article applies domestic comparative law to identify three promising alternative approaches to the current system of orphan well reclamation funds: cooperative federal grant programs, joint and several liability of potentially responsible parties, and carbon offsets credits.

Environmental justice communities are especially disadvantaged when it comes to direct community intervention in matters critical to their well-being. Opportunities may exist, however, to institutionalize resources for those communities’ benefit. In particular, environmental enforcement actions could prove a reliable and effective conduit to access resources and obtain environmental and public health benefits, tailored to communities’ self-identified needs.

Environmental justice has officially been a federal priority since 1994, when Pres. Bill Clinton signed Executive Order No. 12898 directing federal agencies to include consideration of health and environmental conditions in minority, tribal, and low-income communities into agency decisionmaking. In Pres.