미국에서의 기후변화에 대한 법적 전략

Climate change is the most significant environmental challenge facing the world in the twenty-first century. Although the United States was an early leader in exploring the problem of climate change, it did not sign the Kyoto Protocol that it helped negotiate. Moreover, the United States’ own efforts at a comprehensive national strategy to climate change have been unsuccessful. Nevertheless, the United States, at both the national and state level, has begun to pursue several distinct and promising strategies to address climate change. At the national level the Obama administration has recently imposed fuel efficiency standards on vehicles that will result in significant reduction of carbon-dioxide emissions. And a number of states, both individually and through regional compacts, are beginning to take significant steps toward reducing GHG emissions from stationary sources, especially coal-burning power plants. Although the United States falls far short of what it should be doing, these two actions at the national and state levels are the start of a promising legal strategy to address climate change. Part one of this paper will briefly discuss early U.S. efforts to address climate change. Part two will then address legal strategies at the national level, examining both the failed attempt at comprehensive national climate change legislation, as well as recent efforts of the Obama administration to address climate change through the United States’ Clean Air Act. Part three will then examine regional and state strategies to address climate change, with particular attention to efforts to reduce GHG emissions from coal-burning power plants. Finally, part four will briefly review the use of private party litigation as a climate change strategy.