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California & the future of environmental law & policy
Frank, Richard M.
Frank, Richard M.
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Abstract
"Earlier this year, the U.C. Berkeley School of Law’s California Center for Environmental Law & Policy (CCELP) sponsored and hosted a major conference, “California & the Future of Environmental Law & Policy.”[1] The purpose of this successful event, which brought together government policymakers, practicing attorneys, scholars and students, was to explore California’s leadership role—regionally, nationally and globally—in formulating and implementing effective environmental policy. The CCELP conference focused on the most critical environmental challenges facing California, the United States and the international community. Panels of experts debated issues of climate change regulatory policy, alternative energy resource development, ocean and coastal issues, necessary linkages between regional land use and transportation policy, water allocation in an era of increasing scarcity, the so-called “Green Chemistry” movement’s efforts to reform hazardous waste policy, and the potential and limitations of litigation as a tool of climate change policy. Another highlight of the conference was the diverse group of plenary speakers: Peter Gleick, president of the Pacific Institute, who spoke on the role water conservation can play in addressing looming domestic and international water shortages; Jared Huffman, environmental lawyer and advocate-turned-state legislator, who shared his environmental vision and platform; and Nobel Prize winner Stephen Chu, director of the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory at U.C. Berkeley, who offered his sage commentary on the energy-related challenges facing California and the world. Several of the stimulating and insightful presentations from this conference are distilled in the articles, authored by conference participants, found in this issue of Ecology Law Currents. I commend them to your attention. In the same spirit, I offer these introductory comments to summarize my own thoughts—first presented at the conclusion of the CCELP conference[2]—as to how well (or poorly) California has served as national and international leader when it comes to environmental law and policy. The bottom line: in some instances, California has more than lived up to its billing as environmental pioneer and visionary—the envy of the national and international community. In other environmental policy contexts, California gets better marks than the federal government and many of its sister states, but is merely keeping pace with much of the international community. In still others, the State of California has underperformed and, indeed, has much to learn from other states and nations." (p. 1-2)
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2008
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