MATTHEW D. ADLER, University of Pennsylvania - Law School
Email: MADLER@LAW.UPENN.EDU

Should we remain neutral between our interests and those of future generations? Or are we ethically permitted or even required to depart from neutrality and engage in some measure of intergenerational discounting?

This Article addresses the problem of intergenerational discounting by drawing on two different intellectual traditions: The social welfare function (“SWF�) tradition in welfare economics, and scholarship on “prioritarianism� in moral philosophy. Unlike utilitarians, prioritarians are sensitive to the distribution of well-being. They give greater weight to well-being changes affecting worse-off individuals. Prioritarianism can be captured, formally, through an SWF which sums a concave transformation of individual utility, rather than simply summing unweighted utilities in utilitarian fashion.

The Article considers the appropriate structure of a prioritarian SWF in intergenerational cases. The simplest case involves a fixed and finite intertemporal population. In that case, I argue, policymakers can and should maintain full neutrality between present and future generations. No discount factor should be attached to the utility of future individuals.

Neutrality becomes trickier when we depart from this simple case, meaning: (1) “non-identity� problems, where current choices change the identity of future individuals; (2) population-size variation, where current choices affect not merely the identity of future individuals, but the size of the world’s future population (this case raises the specter of what Derek Parfit terms “the repugnant conclusion,� i.e., that dramatic reductions in the average level of individual well-being might be compensated for by increases in population size); or (3) an infinite population. The Article grapples with the difficult question of outfitting a prioritarian SWF to handle non-identity problems, population-size variation, and infinite populations. It tentatively suggests that a measure of neutrality can be maintained even in these cases.

JONATHAN H. ADLER, Case Western Reserve University - School of Law
Email: jha5@case.edu

This Article, prepared for the Case Western Reserve Law Review symposium on “Access to the Courts in the Roberts Era,� offers a preliminary look at the standing jurisprudence of the Roberts Court. Contrary to claims made by some Court commentators, the Roberts Court has not tightened the requirements for Article III standing. To the contrary, insofar as the Roberts Court has altered the law of standing, it has made it easier for at least some litigants to pursue their claims in federal court. The Court’s decisions denying standing have largely reaffirmed prior holdings. By comparison, some of the Court’s decisions on standing, most notably Massachusetts v. EPA and, to a lesser extent, Sprint Communications Co. v. APCC Services Inc., have lowered the standing bar, perhaps quite significantly. Whatever else has transpired with regard to citizen “access to federal courts� in the first four years of the Roberts Court, standing for citizens to invoke the jurisdiction of federal courts remains in place.

BRADFORD C. MANK, University of Cincinnati - College of Law
Email: BRAD.MANK@UC.EDU

In Summers v. Earth Island Institute, the Supreme Court recently rejected Justice Breyer’s dissenting opinion’s proposed test for organizational standing based upon the statistical probability that some of an organization’s members will likely be harmed in the near future by a defendant’s allegedly illegal actions. Implicitly, however, the Court had recognized some form of probabilistic standing in Friends of the Earth v. Laidlaw, which found standing where plaintiffs avoid recreational activities because of “reasonable concerns� about future health injuries from pollution; Summers did not overrule Laidlaw. There is an inherent tension between the Summers and Laidlaw decisions. This Article applies the Summers and Laidlaw frameworks to the facts in Natural Resources Defense Council v. EPA (NRDC II), where the D.C. Circuit found standing because the government’s exemption from regulation of certain uses of methyl bromide, an ozone destroying chemical, would causes 2 to 4 lifetime skin cancer cases among the NRDC’s members. Both Summers and Laidlaw produce questionable results when applied to NRDC II’s facts.

The “realistic threat� test in Justice Breyer’s dissenting opinion in Summers offers a better approach to standing than either Summers’ unrealistic demand that plaintiffs precisely predict the future or Laidlaw’s focus on whether a plaintiff avoided recreational activities rather than whether the defendant’s activities caused actual harm. There was a more realistic threat of harm in Summers than Laidlaw, but the Court found standing in the latter case but not the former case. The Court’s current approach to standing for organizational plaintiffs and probabilistic risks is seriously flawed and the realistic threat test offers a more rational approach to assess which injuries are sufficiently serious for standing in Article III federal courts. Furthermore, a realistic threat test for standing is more consistent with congressional intent in enacting several citizen suit statutes that are involved in the vast majority of cases in which constitutional standing is at issue. In light of NRDC II, the Court should abandon both the Summers and Laidlaw approaches to standing and instead adopt Justice Breyer’s proposed “realistic threat� test to achieve reach more equitable and uniform standing determinations.

RICHARD PERKINS, London School of Economics - Department of Geography and Environment
Email: perkins_rm@yahoo.co.uk
ERIC NEUMAYER, London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE)
Email: E.NEUMAYER@LSE.AC.UK

Although there is evidence that CO2-efficiency enhancing innovations in one country diffuse into other countries to contribute to the goals of climate change mitigation, very little is known about the conditions under which such international spillovers are most likely to take place. Our contribution in the present article seeks to address this gap by examining whether the strength of cross-border CO2-efficiency interdependence working through import ties and inward foreign direct investment (FDI) stocks is greater in (a) countries with lower existing levels of domestic CO2-efficiency and (b) countries with greater social capabilities in terms of a better educated workforce and a less risky institutional environment for investment. We find that less CO2-efficient countries and countries with a more investment-friendly institutional environment experience stronger FDI-weighted CO2-efficiency spillovers, whereas a higher level of human capital increases domestic receptivity to import-weighted international spillovers.

BRUCE YANDLE, Clemson University - John E. Walker Department of Economics
Email: yandle@clemson.edu

The May 2009 Rose Garden ceremony for President Obama’s signing of new fuel efficiency mandates for automobiles was attended by a remarkable gathering of “bootleggers and Baptists� - “Baptist� environmentalists who were pleased to get a policy they desired, and “bootlegger� automakers who were pleased that they will no longer have to make business decisions that weigh the willingness of American consumers to trade-off fuel efficiency for other desirable characteristics such as safety, capacity, power, and comfort. The gathering marked the replacement of industrial capitalism with centralized political management of the auto market.

MOHAMMAD SHAMSUDDOHA, University of Chittagong
Email: mdsdoha@gmail.com

Environmentalism and its movement is getting importance day by day towards conscious citizen, consumers, businessmen, government and environtalist of a country. The environmental movement concept, its method for framing legislative proposals and policies are old-fashioned in the country like Bangladesh. Thinking of the environment as a “thing� has had enormous implications for how environmentalists conduct their policies. Country like Bangladesh is struggling to fulfill the basic components like to his people/Citizen. This is why, our government and its stakeholder never emphasizes on this issues due to priority problems. After that, it is getting now bigger issue as our land, water and other natural resources are limited in the light of real necessity. USA, UK, Germany and other rich countries tried to accommodate environmental friendly plan, policies with their production, product, natural resources like river, seas, mines, valleys and mountain etc. As a third world country, Bangladesh can take the lesson from those country specially USA to redesign the environmental policy for their own needs.

LAWRENCE ZELENAK, Duke University School of Law
Email: aclark@law.duke.edu

In the Emergency Improvement and Extension Act of 2008, Congress called for a $1.5 million carbon audit of the Internal Revenue Code, to be conducted by the National Academy of Sciences (NAS). This article offers some suggestions concerning the approach the NAS should take in conducting the audit. It argues that tax expenditure analysis should play no role in the audit. Instead of first identifying tax expenditures and then evaluating those expenditures for their environmental impacts, the NAS should include in its carbon audit any existing tax provision which satisfies two criteria: that there is a technically and politically realistic alternative to the provision, and that the choice between the current provision and the alternative would be likely to have a significant impact on greenhouse gas emissions. A provision that does not currently exist in the Code should also be included in the study if it satisfies the same two criteria - that is, if its enactment is technically and politically realistic, and if its enactment would be likely to have a significant effect (good or bad) on greenhouse gas emissions.

SUVARNA CHANDRAPPAGARI, Andhra Pradesh Forest Academy
Email: apfa@rediffmail.com

Environmental Education (EE) is a process of recognizing values and clarifying concepts in order to develop skills and added tools necessary to understand and appreciate the inter relationship among man, his culture and his bio physical surroundings as per definition. Formal and informal approaches and activities are undertaken by the government and NGOs in teaching and creating awareness among the school children in EE. However, the subject is not receiving desired attention compared to other academic subjects because of the mounting pressure on students for getting good grades in academics. In this paper, efforts are made to understand how EE subject caught the attention of policy makers, international organizations, and NGOs at international, national and state of Andhra Pradesh (AP) levels. This paper also discusses various EE activities carried out by the government and NGOs in school system in AP. Studies done and observations made by different agencies have been looked into for analyzing the subject and examine the gaps and missing links in the sector for working out necessary linkages so as to have positive impact on environment and society.

IGOR V. NOVIKOV, Suffolk University Law School
Email: igor.novikov@yahoo.com

Solar energy is cheap, abundant, and readily available. Solar energy could help the United States to decrease (and, potentially, eliminate) its dependency on oil imports. However, the rate of solar technology adoption has been slow, to say the least. This paper is an attempt to summarize different ways in which state and local governments, courts, and private citizens address challenges arising from solar power adoption.

KIM DIANA CONNOLLY, University of South Carolina - School of Law
Email: connolly@sc.edu

This essay takes an initial fanciful look at the history of Clean Water Act Section 404 jurisdiction, then following a brief overview of the 2006 Rapanos v. United States decision and events leading up to it, provides an overview of the United States Army Corps of Engineers permitting process. The concluding section attempts to address the outstanding question presented by this essay: can there ever be a “happily ever after" when it comes to protections for wetlands and other waters following recent developments in the 404 program.