Environmental Regulation

Climate wars

In June 2014, after a 20-year staring competition with China and other developing countries, the USA blinked, announcing new domestic rules to reduce greenhouse gas emissions without requiring developing countries to do the same. Frustrated by US Congress’s stalemate on climate action, President Barack Obama took measures to advance a major step in his Climate […]

The right to a healthy environment

In 2010 the United Nations General Assemblyexplicitly recognized the human right to clean drinking water and sanitation and acknowledged that this is essential to the realisation of all human rights. However, to date, there is no specific human right relating to air quality – why is that? It is now recognised that environmental harm can […]

Space debris

Human activities produce waste.There is a catalogue of waste legislation in the UK, most of it deriving from the European Union (EU), from the Waste Framework Directive to the Batteries Directive and many, many more in between. However, no matter where we venture we leave a wake of rubbish. As a result of the use […]

Climate change and corporate power

Most businesses now get climate change. And if they say they don’t they’re fooling themselves; either because it doesn’t quite square with their business model to acknowledge that they might have to change or adapt, or because they don’t want their business to fail when they are in charge. In the latest attempts to get […]