The Methane Majors

2024-04-01T14:43:48+00:00

Over two dozen lawsuits have been filed in U.S. courts against fossil fuel companies by state and local government plaintiffs alleging cli-mate harms and deceptions. But there are other central actors beyond these “Carbon Majors” that contribute heavily to the warming climate. Prominent among them is the animal agriculture sector, a significant emitter of greenhouse gases overall and an especially important source of potent methane emissions. Animal agriculture has thus far escaped most climate litigants’ notice. In jurisdictions around the world, though, the industry has begun to face serious legal challenges premised on its role in driving climate change.

After developing a first-of-its-kind comparative survey highlighting the most consequential legal challenges to date, this Article explores the present reality and future possibilities of climate change and ani-mal agriculture litigation in the United States. With lessons and prec-edents drawn from both foreign and U.S. case law, we chart a variety of strategic courses that those who seek to hold animal agriculture ac-countable might consider. Given the United States’ outsized role in the global animal agriculture industry and inadequate regulation of its climate harms, climate change and animal agriculture litigation—whether successful in court, the court of public opinion, or both—could prove a powerful driver of climate change adaptation and mitigation in the years to come. As this Article demonstrates, a spate of “Methane Majors” cases may be on the horizon.

Moving Water

2024-04-01T14:44:54+00:00

Climate change-induced megadrought and rapid urbanization are forcing western agriculture into retreat as water supplies diminish and heat and drought ravage crops and livestock. At the same time, the megadrought is imposing deep ecological harm on riparian areas, fish species, and soil and increasing the concentration of pollutants in dwindling waterways. These developments raise the question of how to use the water rights left behind as western irrigated agriculture in-evitably shrinks. We argue that federal purchase of some of these rights could create a pool of water available for instream flows (also termed environmental flows) to preserve waterways and aquatic eco-systems. We propose that the federal government acquire some west-ern water rights from agricultural holders, just as it has acquired homes in residential “managed retreat” programs, and dedicate those rights to instream flows. This proposal is novel in agricultural policy, which has stubbornly subsidized agriculture in place, and in the schol-arship on government managed retreat from climate change, which has focused on retreating people and land, not rights in natural re-sources. Federal government managed retreat of western water rights reasserts a federal role in western water allocation, a feature we con-tend accords with current needs as well as history. The allocation of western water and the system of state and private water ownership are largely the result of the post-Civil War response to illegal gold and silver mining thought necessary to encourage western settlement. These policies no longer respond to the modern urbanized West and its present environmental challenges. Drought retreat presents an oppor-tunity for the federal government to move toward a more balanced al-location of western water and create durable environmental benefits.

Columbia Journal of Environmental Law

The Methane Majors

Moving Water