The End of Equilibrium

摘要

Environmental law is about to undergo rapid and wide-ranging reforms. This may be a strange prognostication, considering trie dearth of statutory development over the past 20 years. However, climate change will dramatically alter how we manage natural resources, from forests to wildlife to water. It will reshape coastal zone management, land use planning, and building codes along with disaster preparedness, warning, and response. It will transform the full slate of public health and pollution control statutes. As humanity adapts to an evolving world, environmental protection will need to adapt as well.rnWhile our nearly four-decades-old system of environmental law has made significant progress in cleaning our air and water and protecting natural resources, it is based on an equilibrium model of the biosphere. Existing law is mostly incapable of responding effectively to the breadth and severity of climate change, in large part because the environmental statutes neither contemplated global warming nor are they designedrnto be adaptive. Adapting environmental protection is complicated by the fact that climate change is a moving target - we know there will be stresses on ecosystems but cannot be sure with any precision which will happen, where, when, and how severely. Moreover, climate change will likely be a creeping crisis comprising widespread effects, the magnitude of which are only clear in the aggregate. Unfortunately, governments lack the monitoring, reporting, and assessment processes to identify, letrnalone respond to, such large-scale problems.