This week, ELRS features a post by Daniel Carpenter-Gold, a Managing Editor of Harvard Environmental Law Review. Read La Vie en Vert here!

Malia McPherson Stanford Law School, J.D. Candidate Class of 2016  This post is part of the Environmental Law Review Syndicate. To see the original post and leave a comment, click here. Introduction On November 4, 2014, the voters of San Benito County passed Measure J, a voter initiative banning hydraulic fracturing (‘fracking’) and all other high-intensity petroleum operations within county lines. Under California law, only a subsequent voter initiative can overrule this fracking ban. While it is not the first county or city within California to take a stand against fracking, San Benito’s path to a successful ballot initiative was…

Eric Anthony DeBellis* Eric DeBellis is a 3L at Berkeley Law, where he is Senior Executive Editor of the Ecology Law Quarterly. This post is part of the Environmental Law Review Syndicate. Click here to see the original post and leave a comment. On August 3, 2015, the EPA released its highly anticipated Clean Power Plan, establishing the nation’s first greenhouse gas emissions standards for existing power plants.[1] The Clean Power Plan (“the Rule”) also is the first of its kind in another sense: it employs a unique new regulatory framework that has drawn both praise and criticism. Here, I explain the…

This week’s ELRS post was written by Eric DeBellis, a 3L at Berkeley Law, where he is Senior Executive Editor of the Ecology Law Quarterly. Read “EPA Unveils The Clean Power Plan: So What’s All The Fuss About?” here!

This week’s post was written by Luke Grunbaum, Editor-in-Chief of the UCLA Journal of Environmental Law and Policy. Read the piece, titled From Kyoto to Paris: How Bottom-Up Regulation Could Revitalize the UNFCCC, here!

By Luke Grunbaum* This post is part of the Environmental Law Review Syndicate. Click here to see the original post and leave a comment. The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) establishes the basic principles and goals for future international agreements on climate change.  However, incorporating the ambitious policies and provisions of the UNFCCC into a binding global agreement has proven incredibly challenging.  Previous attempts to create a comprehensive international climate agreement (most notably the Kyoto Protocol) have been largely unsuccessful, and many believe that the top-down approach of prior eras must either be updated or completely abandoned.  This…

Liz Rasheed* This post is part of the Environmental Law Review Syndicate. You are viewing the original post. Leave a comment below! I. Introduction: What is Illicit Wildlife Trafficking? Illicit wildlife trafficking refers to “any environment-related crime that involves the illegal trade, smuggling, poaching, capture or collection of endangered species, protected wildlife (including animals and plants that are subject to harvest quotas and regulated by permits), derivatives or products thereof.”[1] Many species are targeted by specific international markets, while some are targeted by a multiplicity of markets. For example, tigers are sold live as exotic pets, yet skinned for rugs, while…

This week’s Environmental Law Review Syndicate post, Is CITES Endangered?, was authored by our very own Submissions Editor, Liz Rasheed. Way to go, Liz! Read the post here, and leave a comment.

Gillian Schroff* This post is part of the Environmental Law Review Syndicate. Click here to see the original post and leave a comment. I. Introduction Although only a few inches in size, the delta smelt (Hypomesus transpacificus) has become a topic of intense debate in water-scarce California. When the United States Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS or Service) determined that these small fish were a threatened species in 2005, the Service invoked the significant protections of § 7 of the Endangered Species Act (ESA)[1] and water agencies that managed the delta smelt’s habit were suddenly precluded from diverting water in ways that…