The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s most recent set of reports, generally referred to collectively as the Fifth Assessment Report, present significant data and findings about climate change. But what role does law play in addressing and responding to these findings? This book, the second by the Environmental Law Collaborative, an affiliation of environmental law professors, focuses on the relationship between law and the Fifth Assessment Report in hopes of bridging this gap. This book’s chapters are illustrative of the overwhelming number of legal issues that climate change creates. Some of the contributions remain directly tied to the text of the IPCC’s reports, while others focus on climate change more generally. Together, this volume contributes to a constructive and helpful discussion about how to address the climate change challenge.
The Environmental Law Collaborative has once again produced a volume of contributions on a theme of vital importance. Contemporary Issues in Climate Change Law and Policy uses the IPCC’s latest round of reports as the lens through which to assess the progress and trajectory of law for climate change mitigation and adaptation. The result is a collection of chapters that are remarkably diverse in coverage yet coherent and intent in focus. Topics span the waterfront from national security and water infrastructure to religious perspectives and local community action. Each chapter stands on its own as thorough, insightful, and engaging, as well as a bountiful resource of law and policy update and analysis. Unified in the book through its core theme, the authors provide much to be gained for everyone from a newcomer to the rough and tumble of climate policy to those already steeped in its discourse.
—J.B. Ruhl, David Daniels Allen Distinguished Chair of Law, Vanderbilt University Law School