This Article discusses the Trump Administration’s main actions to undermine the role of science in public policy and the consequences for cost-benefit analysis involving climate change policies. It analyzes the specific attacks on science and their impact on relevant policies, namely, the rollbacks of the Clean Water Rule, the pesticides ban, the Clean Air Act, and the Clean Power Plan, as well as modification of the National Environmental Policy Act and regulations promoting fuel efficiency, and the flexibilization of environmental enforcement during the COVID-19 pandemic.

As in prior years, the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2020 contains a variety of provisions setting U.S. Department of Defense priorities for energy, environmental, and natural resource issues. These include measures that represent some degree of consensus on these often-politicized topics.

With the increased risk of flooding due to climate change, potential liability from construction and maintenance of flood control measures is a major consideration governments must consider when planning and building them. This Article discusses how the Supreme Court’s decision in Arkansas Game & Fish Commission v. United States (AGF) laid the groundwork for a new form of takings that the authors term “negligent takings,” increasing the likelihood that the government will be liable after a flooding event.

Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are a toxic, environmentally persistent class of chemicals that have been used widely in consumer products. Despite growing evidence of adverse health effects associated with PFAS exposure, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has not yet promulgated a legally enforceable standard for any of the individual chemicals in the PFAS group. This has resulted in largely unrestricted disposal of PFAS waste and dispersal of these persistent chemicals throughout the environment.

Artificial intelligence (AI) and complex machine learning algorithms have come to play a profound role in many of our day-to-day activities.

The COVID-19 pandemic will have far-reaching and even transformative implications for environmental law.

As companies increase their environmental, social, governance (ESG) reporting and statements in response to market and shareholder demands, plaintiffs have pursued with growing success legal challenges to company claims and disclosures related to ESG performance. Similarly, inventive theories are being put forward to directly attack companies for alleged ESG-related performance and operational deficiencies. In both arenas, there has been a recent growth in efforts to hold companies accountable for supplier misconduct.

This October Term, the U.S. Supreme Court will be asked to weigh in on three and possibly all four of its pending original jurisdiction controversies over interstate waters. The Court’s past judgments and opinions have established little in the way of “federal common law” governing the states’ interests in shared waters. But they have established this much: these interests vest in states-as-states directly under the U.S. Constitution, even if the Court itself is reluctant to specify the interests with much precision or to enjoin violations thereof.

International environmental law (IEL) has developed widely since the first global meeting in Stockholm in 1972. Accounts estimate that there are more than 500 multilateral environmental treaties (MEAs). However, the predicted future shows that current global environmental policy efforts are undeniably insufficient. IEL’s prevailing anthropocentric ethic has directly contributed to the crisis, suppressing the symptoms rather than treating them.