Vermont Law School Releases Inaugural Top 10 Environmental Watch List, Spotlights Policy Issues of 2010

(PR Newswire) Vermont Law School (VLS) today releases its inaugural Top 10 Environmental Watch List spotlighting the nation's most critical environmental law and policy issues of 2010 and how they may play out in 2011. Below is the Top 10 list, which is produced by the nation's top-ranked environmental law school. The full report is available at http://watchlist.vermontlaw.edu/. The report evaluates 10 judicial, regulatory, legislative and other actions that significantly affect humans and the natural world.

"We can continue our short-sighted addiction to fossil fuels or we can adopt innovative, healthier, more sustainable practices," said VLS Dean Jeff Shields. "The Environmental Watch List will help improve public understanding of how to use the law to take action on the critical issues of our time."

1. Congressional failure to enact climate change legislation: Professor Gus Speth, a pioneer of the environmental movement, explores what went wrong and whether the EPA and state and local lawmakers will step forward in 2011.

2. The nation's worst oil spill: Associate Professor Betsy Baker, an expert in the law of the sea, examines the legal and policy fallout from the Deepwater Horizon disaster.

3. First U.S. greenhouse gas rules: Professor Pat Parenteau, whose expertise includes climate change, looks at whether the EPA's efforts to restrict global warming pollutants will survive judicial and political challenges.

4. Climate change in the courts: Associate Professor Martha Judy, an expert in environmental liability, delves into a Supreme Court case that would allow public nuisance lawsuits against major air polluters.

5. California's climate law dodges a bullet: Professor John Echeverria, whose expertise includes climate change, looks at what's next for the Golden State's landmark anti-global warming law that survived a challenge at the ballot box.

6. EPA clamps down on mountaintop removal coal mining: Professor Mark Latham, an expert in environmental enforcement and regulation, examines the EPA's crackdown on the coal industry's practice of tearing off mountain peaks.

7. Wind and solar projects make breakthroughs: Assistant Professor Don Kreis, an expert in energy efficiency, law and regulation, examines plans for the nation's first offshore wind projects and the largest solar energy projects on public lands.

8. Supreme Court reviews genetically modified crops: Professor Jason Czarnezki, whose expertise includes food law and agricultural policy, scrutinizes the Supreme Court's first ruling on so-called Frankenfoods.

9. EPA's water transfer exemption remains in force: Assistant Professor Laura Murphy, an expert in the Clean Water Act, explores the conflict over transferring polluted water from one water body to another.

10. U.S. military going green: Professor Stephen Dycus, an expert in national security law and environmental law, delves into the Pentagon's efforts to use more renewable energy and decrease its reliance on fossil fuels.

Bonus—The Accidental Environmentalist: Professor John Echeverria, whose expertise includes Constitutional law, reflects on the retirement of U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens.

Research Project Finds Everyday Grass Could Provide Green Energy

ScienceDaily (Feb. 18, 2010) — A five-year research project has come up with a way of generating green energy from a humble everyday grass. Researchers at Teesside University's Contaminated Land and Water Center began the project in 2004 to see which plants could best be grown on brownfield sites as a way of improving unsightly blots on the landscape.

Now, the research by the BioReGen (Biomass, Remediation, re-Generation) project team has revealed that reed canary grass can be turned into an excellent fuel for biomass power stations and, on a smaller scale, boilers in buildings like schools. The native British grass is turned into bricks and pellets. These not only burn well but also don't add to greenhouse gases or contribute to global warming.

The team experimented with four types of plant, willow trees, the current favorite for biomass power stations, and the miscanthus, reed canary and switch grasses. Tests were carried out on sites around the region with work supported by a 1.2m Euros grant from the European Union's LIFE-Environment research program.

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STUDY: Fish are Shrinking in Response to Global Warming

DC Traveler, Maine Avenue Fish Market

SHOCK: A study published by the Cemagref Public Agricultural and Environmental Research Institute in Lyon, France, has said that fish have lost half their average body mass and smaller species are making up a larger proportion of European fish stocks as a result of global warming. Martin Daufresne, study author, said "size is a fundamental characteristic that is linked to a number of biological functions, such as fecundity - the capacity to reproduce." Smaller fish usually produce fewer eggs and they also provide less sustenance for predator, including us -- humans, which could have a significant effect on the food chain and the ecosystem

Earlier research has already established that fish have shifted their geographic ranges and their migratory and breeding patters in response to rising water temperatures. It has also been established that warmer regions tend to be inhabited by smaller fish.

Daufresne and his colleagues examined long-term surveys of fish populations in rivers, streams and the Baltic and North Seas and also performed experiments on bacteria and plankton. They found the individual species lost an average of 50 percent of their body mass over the past 20 to 30 years while the average size of the overall fishing stock had shrunk by 60 percent.

This was a result of a decrease in the average size-at-age and an increase in the proportion of juveniles and small-sized species, Daufresne said. "It was an effect that we observed in a number of organisms and in a number of very different environments - on fish, on plankton, on bacteria, in fresh water, in salt water and we observed a global shrinking of size for all the organisms in all the environments," Daufresne said in a telephone interview. AFP

The results of this study are extremely startling and we cannot continue to take global warming and its effects lightly.

African Officials Ask For Climate Reparations Payments at UN Climate Conference in Copenhagen in December

Environment ministers from Africa have called for more money and support from rich nations ahead of a landmark climate conference in Copenhagen because the continent contributes so little to global warming but suffers disproportionately from its effects. The ministers did not give a figure, but the U.N. says Africa needs at least $1 billion a year to manage the effects of climate change such as sinking islands, changing farming techniques and even relocating people from areas affected by extreme weather. In recent years, the continent has begun to experience the effects of a fast warming planet, which has stirred up a hornet's nest of woes on the poorest continent. For example, malaria, which is widespread in warm lowland areas of Africa and kills millions, has started to be recorded in the continent's cooler highland areas. Climate scientists are now predicting that some African mountains will lose all their snow cover and staple crops such as wheat, may disappear in the 2080s.

The U.S. and China are the world's largest polluters, accounting for about half the world's carbon emissions. But neither country was part of the Kyoto accord, which called on 37 countries to cut carbon emissions by a total of 5 percent below 1990 levels.The United States refused to sign Kyoto, citing the costs to the economy and lack of participation by China, India and other fast-developing countries. But some of those countries have said rich countries are not aggressive enough in cutting their own emissions. U.S. emissions now are 16 percent above what they were two decades ago.

Global temperatures have risen 0.22 degrees (0.12 degrees Celsius) since 1990, according to one U.S. government estimate. The U.N.'s chief panel on climate change estimates that the risk of increased severe weather will rise if the global average temperature increases between 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit (1 degree Celsius) and 3.6 degrees (2 degrees Celsius) above 1990 levels.

Scientists attribute at least some of the past century's 1-degree rise in global temperatures to the atmospheric accumulation of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases, byproducts of power plants, automobiles and other fossil fuel-burning sources.

Experts project that within 11 years some African countries may see farm harvests drop by up to 50 percent because water will be scarce and the continent relies on rain for its agricultural production. In the same period, they say, between 75 million and 250 million Africans are expected to suffer increased water shortages because of climate change. Source: Huffington Post

The last thing African needs to have land on its doorstep are problems associated with global warming. I don't know if demanding reparations will help them very much, but it is a starting point in trying to combat the effects of global warming.