Climate Change

For more than three years, the Trump administration has prided itself on working with industry to unshackle companies from burdensome environmental regulations. But as the Environmental Protection Agency prepares to finalize the latest in a long line of rollbacks, the nation’s power sector has sent a different message:

In the face of potential climate catastrophe, some have questioned whether it’s moral to become a parent — is such a burden fair to the broken planet, or to the child who would inherit it? But Sarah Myhre, a climate scientist in Seattle and the mother of a 6-year-old son, rejects this line of thinking. You can’t save humanity by abandoning it, she says, and these sorts of messages are harmful to the children who are already here.

Part of the value of clinic participation is learning how to advocate for a real-life client, as opposed to the hypothetical clients law students deal with in their legal writing courses. But often, clients deviate significantly from our expectations, writes Fellow Candice Youngblood. And while classes on discrimination get us fired up to champion for justice, they cannot flesh out every way justice can manifest for real-life communities.

In cities around the country, if you want to understand the history of a neighborhood, you might want to do the same thing you'd do to measure human health: Check its temperature. That's what a group of researchers did, and they found that neighborhoods with higher temperatures were often the same ones subjected to discriminatory, race-based housing practices nearly a century ago.

Supporters and opponents of the Strauss Wind Energy Project agree on one point: San Miguelito Canyon is unique. .... Golden eagles aren’t the only protected species found in San Miguelito Canyon. It’s also a significant location for the endangered Gaviota tarplant. The yellow petals on this wildflower bloom in late summer and fall, when few other plants are flowering, according to Nick Jensen, a conservation scientist with the California Native Plant Society.

The United States needs to look beyond the current administration’s climate obstructionism, write S. David Freeman and Switzer Fellow John S. Berger. We must start considering laws now that ultimately outlaw fossil fuels. Otherwise, America will be unprepared to take bold meaningful climate action in 2021.

Bruni Pizarro served on New Haven Mayor Elicker's transition team and worked on the Environment and Climate change section of his transition report.

An energy paradox lingers in Indian Country, the land base of Native Americans in the contiguous 48 states: enormous renewable energy generation potential, but numerous barriers to development and electrification. This article by Margaret Tallmadge is the first in a two-part series: first, exploring the barriers to renewable energy development in Indian Country, and second, laying out potential regulatory, legislative, financial, and business solutions for overcoming them.

There is a big blue gap in the Green New Deal, writes Ayana Elizabeth Johnson in The Washington Post. That’s why she helped advise Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) in developing a Blue New Deal for our oceans, to expand the vision of the Green New Deal.