Category: Emerging Issues

Recently, there’s been much discussion about the potential benefits that artificial intelligence can bring to climate change regulation. 

For example, advanced technology, such as satellite data, is being used to identify large emission events — (see ELM’s recent methane rule finalization coverage here and ELM’s previous AI coverage here). AI also is being used to monitor rising sea levels along the United States’ coastlines — (see ELM’s previous sea level coverage here). 

Less consideration, however, has been given to the potential adverse impacts …

Regulations — and executive agencies’ interpretation of those regulations — can make or break companies, and even entire industries.  For decades now, the judiciary’s approach to administrative review, found in the landmark 1984 case Chevron U.S.A. Inc. v. National Resources Defense Council, largely deferred to government agencies’ interpretation of their governing statutes on the grounds that such agencies were best positioned to interpret those statutes. “Chevron deference” became a foundational framework for administrative law.  

But in recent years, critics have argued that Chevron…

On January 17, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral argument in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, No. 22-451, an environmental-law dispute concerning fishery management in federal waters.       

The case reached the court via a petition of four commercial fishing companies challenging a federal fisheries regulation, the Magnuson-Stevens Act, which provides that the National Marine Fisheries Service can require private vessels to “carry” federal observers onboard to allow for the enforcement of the agency’s regulations (federally-prescribed fishing “catch” limits being the most …

At the end of October, North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper issued Executive Order No. 292, which reestablishes the Secretary of Environmental Quality’s (DEQ) Environmental Justice and Equity Advisory Board (EJ Board) as the Governor’s Environmental Justice Advisory Council (EJA Council), originally established by the head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Michael Regan, who previously served as North Carolina’s DEQ Secretary.

In a “whole of government” approach to policymaking, EO 292 also directs equity-promoting actions that reflect the needs communicated by local communities overburdened …