Forum tackles nuclear safety and climate change

Dec 5, ’11

Richard Stewart, University Professor and John Edward Sexton Professor of Law, moderated the November 30 Milbank Tweed Forum. Titled “Global Warming or Nuclear Meltdown? The Future of Nuclear Power After Fukushima,” the discussion took on issues ranging from fears of nuclear proliferation to the recent crisis at the Fukushima plant in Japan, and, on the plus side, whether nuclear power can provide stable, secure, low-carbon electricity and curb climate change. Panelists included Michael Levi, a senior fellow and director of the program on energy security and climate change at the Council of Foreign Relations; William McCollum, chief operating officer of the Tennessee Valley Authority, which operates three nuclear and 11 coal-fired plants; and Christopher Paine, nuclear program director for the Natural Resources Defense Council.

In his introduction to the discussion, Stewart, who is also the director of the Frank J. Guarini Center on Environmental and Land Use Law, noted that nearly all of the nuclear plants in the U.S. started construction before 1975 and that “ten years ago one would have said that the nuclear industry is moribund, there are not going to be any more new plants in the United States.” Then, he noted, “there was a change in direction and attitude” due to growth in energy demand, rising energy prices, concerns about energy security, and global warming. “There was talk in the 2005 era of a U.S. nuclear renaissance,” Stewart said. But, he added, “at this point the bloom is somewhat off the renaissance,” because of a drop in electric demand caused by the recession and safety concerns raised by the Fukushima incident. Additionally, Stewart noted, the U.S. has not figured out how it will dispose of its nuclear waste — the subject of his most recent book. “There’s a complex web of economic and environmental and security, as well as political and legal issues here,” he said.

Watch the full video of the event (1 h 13 min):

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Student panel examines the health and environmental consequences of factory farms

Nov 4, ’11

The following account was written by Elizabeth Hallinan ’13, who was one of the organizers of the program, and then moderated the discussion.

On Tuesday, October 25th, NYU Law’s Student Animal Legal Defense Fund and the Environmental Law Society hosted a panel to discuss another crisis in the American food culture – the prevalence of Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs), colloquially known as factory farms.

As explained by Nebraska farmer Kevin Fulton of the sustainable Fulton Farms, CAFOs are not the mom-n-pop family farm pictured on your milk carton. CAFOs, as explained by the EPA, are “agricultural operations where animals are kept and raised in confined situations…which congregate animals, feed, manure and urine, dead animals, and production operations on a small land area.”

Panelist Mark Bittman, a columnist and long-time food writer for the New York Times, is worried about the environmental damage these operations can do. CAFOs are major polluters of both local toxins (for example when manure lagoons overflow into local waterways) as well as greenhouse gases from both the facilities and the animals themselves. Bittman has written extensively about the problems stemming from the over-consumption of meat in the U.S. On the panel, he claimed that meat is not as cheap as it seems to be. He pointed out that if we included the extensive environmental and health costs to society – what economists call “externalities” of the system – the price of a steak dinner is actually very expensive. According to Fulton, Americans used to spend far more money on food than on health insurance. Now that ratio is reversed.

As we have moved from family farms to factory farms, other unintended consequences have arisen. Jen Sorenson, a litigator with the Natural Resources Defense Council explained that 80% of all antibiotics in the US are fed to CAFO animals. These antibiotics are given subtherapeutically, meaning they are used not to improve animal health, but to enhance growth rate and improve feed efficiency. Unfortunately, as Bittman pointed out, this extraordinary overuse of antibiotics contributes to the growing prevalence of “superbugs” that are resistant to therapeutic use of these antibiotics when animals, and humans, need treatment.

As one audience member commented after the panel, the problem with discussing factory farming is that you pull the thread of one problem, and the entire system starts to unravel. Animal welfare, worker safety, labor rights, and many other issues are implicated in the mess of the CAFO system.

So what can we do? Bittman wishes we would cook more at home and rely less on the food industry to tell us what we should eat. Sorenson suggested that focusing on the human health concerns is the best tactic in litigation aimed at curbing CAFOs. Jon Lovvorn, an attorney at the Humane Society of the United States, has found nuisance law to be a fruitful litigation approach. And Fulton invited the entire audience to see a sustainable farm at work in Nebraska. Judging by the warm reception given to him, and all our speakers, by the audience that night, I might not be the only one to take him up on his offer.

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European Climate Change Ministers Hold NYU Workshops

Oct 30, ’11

Over the last year, Connie Hedegaard (EU Commissioner for Climate Action), Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet (French Minister for Ecology) and Serge Lepeltier (French Ambassador for Climate Negotiations) each held workshops on current climate policy at NYU, continuing the Global Climate Finance Project’s series of meetings between leading international policy-makers and NYU faculty and students.

Connie Hedegaard, European Commissioner for Climate Action participating in a roundtable discussion.

Commissioner Hedegaard, who was chair of the Copenhagen climate conference in December 2009, came to campus in September 2010 after asking the Global Climate Finance Project to gather a group of experts to discuss issues relating to climate finance. In addition to Hedegaard and the European Commission’s Director of Climate Strategy and International Negotiations Artur Runge-Metzger, NYU professors and fellows participated along with colleagues from Columbia University, Dartmouth College, Environmental Defense Fund, Peterson Institute for International Economics, World Resources Institute, and the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative

The workshop engaged in lively debate on a number of contentious issues, including the institutions and MRV structures for climate finance, the use of border carbon adjustments, the U.S. domestic political obstacles to implementing proposed international levies (for example, on bunker fuels), and the role of corporations in the current climate change negotiations and in any future climate finance regime.

Professor Richard Stewart, French Minister Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet and Robert Orr, Assistant UN Secretary General discuss the future of climate finance

In March 2011, French Minister for Ecology, Sustainable Development, Transport, and Housing Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet was the lead speaker at “From Fast-Start to Long-Term Finance for Climate Protection: The Need for New Funding Sources,” a panel discussion involving the Assistant UN Secretary General Robert Orr, Professor Richard Stewart and others.

Following the public panel, a small private workshop was held on climate finance issues and opportunities in the upcoming international meetings and U.S. climate regulation. Participants included the panelists, the French ambassador to the United States, the French ambassador for climate change negotiations, the deputy governor of the Banque de France, and additional experts.

Serge Lepeltier (third from right) and NYU professors and fellows

In September 2011, Serge Lepeltier, the French Ambassador for Climate Negotiations returned with his climate advisors from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to discuss climate finance in the lead up to the Durban climate conference. Participating were professors and fellows from NYU and its research partners, World Resources Institute and Environmental Defense Fund.

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Administrative and Regulatory State Clinic Comments on EPA Transport Rule

Sep 30, ’11

In October 2010, students from the Administrative and Regulatory State Clinic completed the clinic’s first project. Working with Institute for Policy Integrity’s Executive Director Michael Livermore ’06, Legal Director Jason Schwartz and Dean Richard Revesz, Adrienne Rose ’11 and Peter Miljanich ’11 submitted comments to the EPA on the proposed Transport Rule. The plan aims to reduce certain kinds of air pollutants that drift across state lines.

Adrienne Rose ’11 (left) and Peter Miljanich ’11 (third from left) with fellow students in the ARS clinic.

The Transport Rule replaced the Clean Air Interstate Rule (CAIR), issued in 2005 as a cap-and-trade program for sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide emissions in 28 states and the District of Columbia. CAIR sought to curb the emissions of these pollutants, which can create serious health issues like asthma, heart disease and cancer. However, a court ruling found problems with the law’s interstate trading system, which offered the purchase of allowances to meet reduction requirements.

Through extensive research, seminar work, discussions with environmental groups, like Environmental Defense Fund, and weekly meetings with Policy Integrity staff, Adrienne and Peter analyzed the rule and offered suggested revisions to make the regulation more cost-effective. This included finding supporting evidence to advocate for a flexible trading scheme that allows for the most interstate trading that is legally permissible.

Policy Integrity also offered a number of other recommendations focused on clarifying and strengthening the Rule’s justification, using an auction-based methodology to allocate emissions allowances, and allowing trading of sulfur dioxide credits between all states (as opposed to only allowing trading between EPA grouped states).

The project provided invaluable hands-on experience in regulatory proceedings and skills development in statutory interpretation and policy analysis. Working on the transport rule also helped the students develop their use of cost-benefit analysis as a tool in critiquing the economic analyses that underlie agency rules.

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Furman Center Launches Affordable Housing Map of NYC

Sep 30, ’11

The Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy and its Institute for Affordable Housing Policy recently launched the Subsidized Housing Information Project (SHIP), an interactive database with extensive information on nearly 235,000 units of privately-owned subsidized rental housing in New York City. The database consolidates information from 50 separate public and private data sources into one searchable website, now available at: www.furmancenter.org/data/search.

A portion of the Subsidized Housing Information Project (SHIP) map--here, the East Village, NYC.

The new resource—which provides the most comprehensive overview of subsidized housing in New York City available — is the result of an ongoing, multi-year partnership with the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD), the New York City Housing Development Corporation (HDC), New York State Homes and Community Renewal (HCR), the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).

SHIP allows government agencies, housing and community advocates, the media, and the public to access information on every privately-owned, publicly-subsidized affordable property developed with four key government programs: HUD financing and insurance, HUD project-based rental assistance, the New York City and New York State Mitchell-Lama programs, or Low-Income Housing Tax Credits (LIHTC). The Institute for Affordable Housing Policy’s accompanying report, State of New York City’s Subsidized Housing: 2011, uses SHIP data to identify 227 properties throughout the city that are at-risk of expiring out of affordability programs by the end of 2015, as well as outlining opportunities for preservation.

The Institute also released a set of online resources to help users navigate the SHIP database, including a Directory of New York City’s Affordable Housing Programs.

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Stewarts’ New Book Diagnoses U.S. Nuclear Waste Policy Failures

Sep 30, ’11

University Professor Richard Stewart and his wife Jane Stewart ’79, have just published Fuel Cycle to Nowhere: U.S. Law and Policy on Nuclear Waste. The Obama Administration’s abandonment of the Yucca Mountain repository in Nevada—the sole destination for disposal of nuclear waste—has created a crisis as waste continues to pile up at nuclear power plants. The book analyzes the roots of the crisis and proposes solutions.

The Fukushima disaster in Japan and the continuing threat of terrorist attacks on the 65  operating nuclear reactor sites across the country that currently store wastes make solutions all the more urgent. The Stewarts offer fresh strategies, based on consent by informed host localities and states, new funding mechanism, and a new federal corporation to manage waste – for developing a new waste repository to bury wastes as well as consolidated interim storage facilities. The Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future appointed by President Obama, to which Professor Stewart presented last November, recently issued draft recommendations that track many of the proposals made in the book.

Fuel Cycle to Nowhere provides the first comprehensive history and overview of U.S. nuclear waste law and regulation. The Stewarts trace sixty years of nuclear weapons programs, the growth of nuclear power, their waste legacies, the rise of environmentalism, and the responses of federal agencies. They examine a success—the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico, known as WIPP, the world’s only operating deep geologic nuclear waste disposal facility—but also many failures, including Yucca Mountain. The lessons learned from these experiences provide the foundation for the book’s policy recommendations.

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Students do Environmental Internships Abroad, and at Home

Sep 30, ’11

Each summer, the Guarini Summer Environmental Internship grants provides financial assistance to 10 NYU Law students. These students work for international and domestic NGOs and government agencies for the summer. Faculty help students to share and use their experiences and to develop training and networking opportunities that help them secure full-time positions in the field following graduation.

This summer, Relic Sun ’13, worked at the Environmental Law Project of the Natural Resources Defense Council – Beijing office. In addition to visiting and documenting severe local pollution sites with NRDC colleagues, she wrote the English version of NRDC’s cutting-edge policy report on enhancing the environmental public interest litigation system in China. The report, titled “Enhancing Environmental Protection through Judicial Means – Environmental Courts and Environmental Public Interest Litigation in China:  Current Circumstances, Challenges, and Recommendations” (通过司法手段推进环境保护 - 环保法庭与环境公益诉讼：现状、问题与建议) will be published this autumn.

Relic Sun (back row) and other NRDC fellows, along with NRDC staff and NGO members at a roundtable in Wuhan

Other students worked at the Sierra Club Environmental Law Program, Environmental Defense Fund, the NYC Law Department, Earthjustice – Northwest Office, Earthjustice – International Program, and the Department of Justice – Environment and Natural Resources Division – Appellate Section.

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Environmental Law LL.M Enters Second Year

Sep 30, ’11

This September, NYU Law welcomed its second class of Environmental Law LL.M.’s.  Like last year, there are ten students from around the world (five from South America, two from the US, and one each from Europe, Africa, and Oceania) participating in the program.

The Environmental Law LL.M. is designed to train the next generation of leaders in environmental and land use law by offering courses with leading environmental law academics and practitioners, clinical and internship opportunities. This is already happening for the first class of students that completed their LL.M. in May. For example, Vyoma Jha (LL.M. ’11) from India, was selected as a NYU International Finance and Development Fellow and is working on the Investment and Sustainable Development team of the International Institute of Sustainable Development (Geneva). A paper that Jha wrote as a part of her International Environmental Law Clinic placement with the Council on Energy, Environmental and Water, entitled ‘Cutting Both Ways?: Climate, Trade and the Consistency of India’s Domestic Policies’ has now been published as a working paper.

Students in the program take a core of environmental and land use courses, including the capstone Advanced Environmental Law Seminar, in which they write a thesis with close faculty mentoring. In addition, students can choose from a wide range of elective courses, allowing them the flexibility to pursue more specialized interests such as international environmental law, urban development, climate change law, and natural resources law.

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Environmental Law Society

Sep 28, ’11

The Environmental Law Society (ELS) is the student-run organization for all future environmental lawyers and all law students interested in environmental law. Throughout the year, the ELS runs educational events focused on environmental law. In October 2010, the ELS and the Environmental Law Journal hosted a symposium entitled “On Thin Ice: International Law and Environmental Protection in a Melting Arctic.” The symposium examined the promise and threat of an accessible Arctic and featured a keynote address by Peter Taksøe-Jensen, Danish ambassador to the U.S. and former U.N. Assistant Secretary General for Legal Affairs. Later in the year, the ELS and Guarini Center hosted a lunch-time discussion of possible paths forward for U.S. climate policy. As well, the ELS organized career panels and strengthened its mentoring program, in which 2Ls advise and support 1Ls pursuing environmental law.

ELS continued to arrange for students to conduct research with Islands First, an organization aimed at giving a voice to Pacific islands, which are particularly vulnerable to the effects of climate change. It also instituted a new research collaboration with the Natural Resources Defense Council, providing students with the opportunity to help develop sustainable food policy.

The ELS also runs a series of outdoor events, including hiking, apple-picking, planting gardens at the law school and cleaning the Hudson River shore.

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Environmental Law Journal

Sep 28, ’11

The Environmental Law Journal recently completed a productive year, publishing three issues featuring articles on cost-benefit analysis, human rights and environmental regulation, emissions markets, and numerous other cutting-edge issues in environmental law.

Over the past two years, ELJ successfully implemented a plan to reduce its use of paper and other resources. Print editions of ELJ are still published, but the journal has now achieved a nearly paperless process for producing print-ready copy. In addition to these modifications to its own publishing process, ELJ will continue to work with other legal journals at NYU over the coming year to streamline their operations and reduce their environmental impact. This year ELJ will investigate the feasibility of reducing its ecological footprint even further by becoming an online-only publication.

In October 2010, ELJ, the Environmental Law Society, and NYU’s Journal of International Law and Politics co-hosted a symposium. Titled “On Thin Ice: International Law and Environmental Protection in a Melting Arctic,” the event brought together practitioners, academics and students to analyze pertinent issues surrounding Arctic governance. The journal is currently organizing a symposium scheduled for February 2012 on local environmental progress at the municipal level, co-sponsored with the Environmental Law Society.

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