Climate Change Disasters and Environmental Law

• Author: Andrea Giampetro‐Meyer
• Date: 01 June 2019
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/jlse.12093
• Published date: 01 June 2019

Journal of Legal Studies Education

Volume 36, Issue 2, 213–236, Summer 2019

Climate Change Disasters

and Environmental Law

Andrea Giampetro-Meyer∗

I. INTRODUCTION

On August 25, 2017, Harvey hit the Houston area with two weather events.

First, Harvey was a Category Four hurricane with winds close to 130 miles

perhourinsomeareas.

1Second, Harvey brought unrelenting rain. Over five

days, twenty-seven trillion gallons of rain fell.2The rainfall was so significant

that the National Weather Service had to create new colors to illustrate the

amounts.3The initial winds damaged homes and businesses. The days-long

rain brought historic flooding to the area.

Houston is America’s petrochemical hub.4More than 450 plants and

refineries share neighborhoods with people in America’s fourth-largest city.5

During and after the hurricane, rainwater grew into gushing rivers that

washed over chemical plants and into homes, settling onto neighborhoods

like lakes. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) reported

that nearly 80,000 homes had at least eighteen inches of floodwater, and

∗Professor at Loyola University Maryland.

1Saundra Brown, The Long Road to Recovery: Response and Rebuilding After Hurricane Harvey,81

TEX. B.J. 242 (2018).

2Id.

3Bill Chappell, National Weather Service Adds New Colors So It Can Map Harvey’s Rains,NAT’LPUB.

RADIO (Aug. 8, 2017), http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/08/28/546776542/

national-weather-service-adds-new-colors-so-it-can-map-harveys-rains.

4Jen Kirby, The Environmental Fallout of Hurricane Harvey,N.Y.MAG. (Sept. 2, 2017), http://

nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/09/the-environmental-fallout-of-hurricane-harvey.html.

5Id.

C2019 The Author

Journal of Legal Studies Education C2019 Academy of Legal Studies in Business

213

214 Vol. 36 / The Journal of Legal Studies Education

23,000 of those had more than five feet.6Harvey proved to be one of the

worst natural disasters in American history. Some people have described

Harvey as “the benchmark disaster of record in the United States.”7As green-

house gasses continue to warm the atmosphere, heat waves, wildfires, rising

sea levels, flooding, drought, and shortages of clean water will challenge

Harvey as the benchmark disaster of record.8

Climate change provides an opportunity for law professors to prepare

students to raise informed, insightful questions about the legal and ethical

challenges climate-related disasters present for individuals and businesses.

Additionally, students might be prepared to answers their questions, draw-

ing upon what they have learned in their Legal Environment of Business

course. The purpose of this article is to show professors how to energize the

environmental law unit in the Legal Environment of Business course using

superstorms, environmental justice principles, and total participation tech-

niques (TPTs).9In my observation, environmental law chapters designed for

legal environment courses tend to be organized around federal laws and

cases that are detailed and somewhat tedious. By contrast, what is happening

in today’s environment is disastrous but also fast paced and interesting.

Instead of organizing the environmental law unit around a text-

book chapter, this article suggests organizing the unit around disasters

6Id. For an overview of what FEMA does, see Dan Farber, How Disaster Response Works,LEGAL

PLANET (Aug. 29, 2017), http://legal-planet.org/2017/08/29/femas-role-in-disaster-response-

its-not-what-you-think/.

7Eric Holthaus, Harvey Is What Climate Change Looks Like, POLITICO MAG., http://www.politico.

com/magazine/story/2017/08/28/climate-change-hurricane-harvey-215547.

8Georgina Guston, Wildfires to Hurricanes, 2017’s Year of Disasters Carried Climate Warnings,IN-

SIDE CLIMATE NEWS (Dec. 29, 2017), http://insideclimatenews.org/news/29122017/hurricanes-

fires-drought-2017-year-review-climate-change-disasters-new-normal.

9P´

ERSIDA HIMMELE &WILLIAM HIMMELE,TOTAL PARTICIPATION TECHNIQUES:MAKING EVERY

STUDENT AN ACTIVE LEARNER (2d ed. 2017) The Himmele & Himmele book presents dozens

of meaningful, high-level techniques teachers can use to get students actively involved in class.

Each exercise motivates students to participate in learning. TPTs support flipped classrooms,

classrooms that increase teacher-student interaction, student-student interaction, and encourage

students to be responsible for their own learning environment. Teachers are mentors and

facilitators. Ziling Xu & Yeli Shi, Application of Constructivist Theory in Flipped Classroom, 8T

HEORY

&PRAC.IN LANGUAGE STUD. 880 (2018); see also Anna Therese Steen-Utheim & Njal Foldnes,

A Qualitative Investigation of Student Engagement in a Flipped Classroom,23T

EACHING IN HIGHER

EDUC. 307 (2018). Steen-Utheim & Foldnes explain the significance of learner-centered ways of

teaching, especially active approaches as opposed to lectures. Students who are more engaged

develop deeper understanding of course material.