Nine of the 10 costliest U.S. hurricanes on record have ravaged the Atlantic and Gulf Coasts in the first two decades of the 21st century, yet federal, state, and local governments continue to struggle with devising an efficient and effective way to help cities and towns recover. This Article focuses on law-related obstacles encountered during the disaster response and recovery post- Superstorm Sandy.

President Donald Trump has referred to climate change as a “hoax,” and in March 2017 issued Executive Order No. 13783, Promoting Energy Independence and Economic Growth. Section 5 of this Order directs federal agencies to discontinue use of the social cost of carbon (SCC), a protocol developed under the Barack Obama Administration to monetize the impacts of climate-related disasters and disruption. This directive sets up a conflict with the requirements of NEPA, and likely will be challenged in the courts.

After a two-year pilot program, the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress formally established the Procuratorate Public Interest Litigation (PPIL) System on June 27, 2017. Since the courthouse door in China has been opened for the procuratorate to protect the public interest, the number of such cases has skyrocketed. The vastly expanded number and geographic scope of such cases demonstrates that the procuratorate plays a significant role in protecting the public interest.

Fisheries are tightly regulated under the broad Magnuson-Stevens Act, yet fish stocks widely remain either stagnant or in decline. Current management tools are failing to ensure that fish populations maintain the reproductive capacity needed to recover. One of the oldest and most widely used tools is minimum size restrictions.

Governments, intergovernmental organizations, financial institutions, corporations, and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) are examining green financing mechanisms in earnest. Financial institutions are enabling investment in green infrastructure, and many have signed on to the Equator Principles, a risk management framework for determining, assessing, and managing environmental and social risk in projects.

The year 2017 witnessed further development of environmental law in China. Environmental protection was affirmed in the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC) held in October 2017, and was stressed in various parts of President Xi Jinping’s report to this CPC Congress. In line with the environmental protection policies, the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress revised some laws related to environmental protection, and the Supreme People’s Court also took some initiatives for environmental protection.

Corporate America does not speak with one voice on climate change. On the one hand, hundreds of companies recognize the gravity of the environmental, social, and economic disruption that the majority of climate scientists are predicting, and are taking action to reduce their exposure to the financial risks of climate change, quantify and control their greenhouse gas emissions, and adapt to impacts either now occurring or just over the horizon.

Recycling is perhaps the most prevalent pro-environmental activity at the household level. And while most states have some sort of statewide recycling laws, new recycling initiatives have not been prominent. Has recycling behavior stabilized or perhaps dropped in the current era in which there have been fewer new state recycling initiatives? To explore recycling trends and the factors related to these trends, this Comment uses a comprehensive national database covering U.S. recycling over a 10-year period beginning in 2005. This analysis reveals a number of important findings.

Deep decarbonization will have to explore the use of negative emissions technologies (NETs), which include the direct air capture (DAC) of ambient carbon dioxide. NETs capture or consume more carbon dioxide than they emit, and DAC is a subset of NETs that use any industrialized chemical or physical methods to remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere and then store or reuse those gases, typically in a way that does not allow them to escape.

People care enormously about what happens to those with whom they are close. Nonetheless, standard cost-benefit analyses usually measure only direct impacts on individuals, as well as sometimes the abstract preferences people have about matters with which they have no connection. This ignores the indirect impacts of regulations on the loved ones of those directly impacted.