Climate Change in the Endangered Species Act: A Jurisprudential Enigma

摘要

By any measure, the threat of mass extinction due to climate change has erupted with enormous speed. The idea was not even on the radar screen of the ESA's drafters. They saw threats as particularized in time and space, and they authorized FWS and NOAA Fisheries to intervene on behalf of endangered species. It is no critique of what the ESA has accomplished to nevertheless assert the inaptness of that model to what is happening now and in the foreseeable future.