Water and Our Well-Being
Mar 14, 2024 10:34 AM
Trienens Institute Faculty Affiliate and Professor Sera Young reflects on her work to develop Water Insecurity Experiences (WISE) Scales to capture universal experiences with water access and use
Environmental and Energy Law Challenges
Robert A. Weinstock | April 17, 2024
As a U.S. environmental lawyer, I have Earth Day to thank for my very livelihood. Throughout the first half of the 20th century, scientific understanding of environmental crises and government regulatory structures each became well-developed. However, sweeping legislative responses to address undeniable environmental threats came only after overwhelming public outcry, which reached a crescendo on April 22, 1970. Environmental lawyers and policy advocates generations later still confront environmental and natural resource problems using the suite of federal laws passed in the wake of that first Earth Day.
As the Director of Northwestern Pritzker School of Law’s Environmental Advocacy Center (EAC), I constantly grapple with the question of whether those 20th Century laws are up to the task of confronting our 21st Century environmental and energy law challenges. Two of the most central such challenges are combatting climate change and addressing the legacy of structural racism in U.S. environmental and land use laws.
On the climate front, the EAC is proud to represent the Respiratory Health Association (lawyering in coalition with Trienens Institute partner, the Environmental Defense Fund) administrative and judicial cases to fully realize the promise of Illinois’ landmark Clean and Equitable Jobs Act – a state statute trying to fill the void of federal legislative inaction by using new policy mechanisms like “Beneficial Electrification” planning proceedings before the Illinois Commerce Commission. The EAC seeks to elevate ways in which effective climate policies can also improve individual people’s lives such as shifting freight engines away from diesel fuel and toward electrification to reduce greenhouse gas and simultaneously deliver public health benefits by reducing local air pollutants that sicken people every day in the predominantly low-income and people of color communities who live near freight hubs and highways.
With respect to structural disenfranchisement, the EAC is a central player in the overdue national effort to bring civil rights concepts into environmental law. We represent leading environmental justice organization the Southeast Environmental Taskforce in reaching recent path-breaking settlements of federal civil rights complaints with the Department of Housing and Urban Development and the U.S. EPA. The former requires that City land use and permitting be overhauled to address the cumulative impacts of pollution concentrated in neighborhoods of color; the latter requires the state to reform its air permitting program similarly and is particularly important in the national context where USEPA has been sued by other states to prevent this exact application of civil rights laws. This work was featured at the Law School’s Journal of Law and Social Policy annual symposium this month.
The EAC also strives to use its unique position as a bridge between Northwestern’s superlative science faculty and the policy spaces they should be influencing to bring 21st Century solutions to bear on the 20th Century problems that continue to plague U.S. society. I think particularly of the scourge of lead poisoning, for which U.S. environmental law has been remarkably effective in reducing lead risks from some sources, while shamefully ineffective in preventing child exposure through the tap water they drink every day. The EAC is proud to partner with world-renowned Northwestern faculty like Julius Lucks, Sera Young, J.F. Gaillard, and William Dichtel to pilot cutting-edge synthetic biology-based rapid lead tests in Chicago communities. In February, the EAC brought this cross-campus collaboration to Washington, formally commenting on the U.S. EPA’s proposed revisions to the Lead and Copper Rule and urging the federal regulator to integrate these new breakthrough technologies in its effort to finally achieve lead-free drinking water for all.
This Earth Month, while we redouble our broader efforts at the EAC, we also note specific global environmental challenges. The theme of many Earth Day programs this year is ‘Planet vs. Plastics’. With such daunting challenges, we take inspiration from the work of alumni, like Ryann Howard (MPPA ’20), an advisor for plastic pollution with the White House Council on Environmental Quality. We also look to Northwestern’s own Paula M. Trienens Institute for Sustainability and Energy along with its Program on Plastics, Ecosystems, and Public Health (PEPH). Both scientific discovery and policy advancements are key to regulating a more sustainable lifecycle for plastics.
This month we are also taking a close look at the work of my colleague, Alex Lee, a professor of law at Northwestern and Director of the Center on Law, Business, and Economics (CLBE). With the recent release of the SEC Climate Disclosure Rule, his scholarship on securities regulation and administrative law is particularly timely. CLBE will soon host a symposium on Integrating Science and Law & Economics to Inform Energy Policy in a Decarbonized Future, together with the Trienens Institute and CLBE’s Institute for Regulatory Law and Economics.
Across the university, sustainability is an enduring priority and challenge requiring collaboration. Just last week our business school held its 2nd Annual Kellogg Climate Conference. There will be a host of Earth Week activities across the university later this month. On May 1, the annual Northwestern Sustainability Lecture Series will be hosted by Alessandro Rotta Loria, Louis Berger Assistant Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, and his dedicated students. This program is free and open to the public and features a top tier slate of researchers in important fields.
Spring, of course, is a time for renewal and so it is a particularly exciting time to look around and celebrate Northwestern’s remarkable efforts to shape a safer and more just future on climate, environmental and energy issues. From downtown at the Law School, we applaud and thank our colleagues throughout the University for bringing their unparalleled talents and resources to bear in this collective effort. There will be no single solution to modern intersectional and unprecedently complex environmental and energy challenges, and that is true whether one approaches these problems from a scientific perspective or as a lawyer and policy advocate. Our world needs each of us to do our part and we at the EAC are honored to play our small role among this cast of remarkable players here at Northwestern.
Robert A. Weinstock
Clinical Associate Professor of Law
Director, Environmental Advocacy Center
Faculty Affiliate, Paula M. Trienens Institute for Sustainability and Energy