Climate Changes: Managing a Tectonic Shift in Law and Practice

• Author: G. Tracy Mehan III
• Pages: 53-55

53

Climate Changes:

Managing a Tectonic Shift

in Law and Practice

By G. Tracy Mehan III

Global Climate Change and U.S. Law, edited by Michael B . Gerrard.

American Bar Associ ation. 754 pages.

From the November/ December 2007 issue of The Environment al Forum.

I

recently addressed a conference of waste-

water utility mangers in Oregon in which

a substantial part of the program was

focused on energy eciency, reducing green-

house gases, and generating o set or trading

credits for the benet of both the environ-

ment and the bottom line.

Oregon was one of the rst of m any

states, cities, a nd private rms t hat are

moving aggre ssively, on bot h the regula-

tory and non-reg ulatory fronts, to reduce

GHGs in the hope of mitigating g lobal c li-

mate change. It is par t of a tectonic sh ift in

policy, law, and practice at the international,

regional, state, and local levels —all but the

national level.

is ferment beyond the Beltway more than justies the publication by

the American Bar Association of an authoritative, comprehensive legal tome,

754 pages in length, on Global Climate Change and U.S. Law even in the face

of the nation’s reluctance to ratif y the Kyoto Protocol and the absence of a

federal law or administrative rule regulating GHG emissions.

Global Climate Change is an impressive work of legal scholarship from

the A BA’s Section of Environment, Energy, a nd Resources, a collaborative

eort of t he most knowledgeable and experienced practitioners in the eld,

guided by the steady ed itorial ha nd of Michael B. Gerrard, former SEER