This Friday and Saturday, the New York University School of Law is hosting a symposium, “Breaking the Logjam: Environmental Law for the 21st Century.” Co-sponsored with New York Law School and the NYU Environmental Law Journal, the symposium seeks to “diagnose the roots of current failures and present specific changes in US law” to address existing environmental challenges. Speakers were tasked with analyzing specific environmental issues and devising concrete reform proposals based upon four broad principles:
Cross-cutting regulatory approaches that address underlying causes. Since many environmental problems cut across the boundaries established by existing regulatory programs, existing statutes must be restructured to match the true character of environmental problems and their underlying causes.
Openness about trade-offs. New statutes must acknowledge that trade-offs are inevitable and ensure that they are made in public view based on reliable information.
Scaling regulatory authority to the problem. Statutes should empower states and trim the federal government