We are told the digital economy is weightless, a realm of pure information. Yet its most critical physical infrastructure—the data center—consumes water at alarming rates, governed by America’s oldest and most divergent water laws. This creates hidden sacrifice zones where technological progress is paid for with the foundational resource of communities that can least afford to lose it.
Read MoreThe Endangered Species Act is a critical environmental law, just over fifty years old, that provides a fundamental pathway to prevent the extinction of plants, fish, and wildlife. Enacted in 1973 with overwhelming bipartisan support, it stands as one of the nation’s most comprehensive and powerful conservation statutes.
Read MoreArtificial intelligence is transforming commercial, governmental, and scientific sectors at a pace unmatched by prior technological shifts. However, its rapid integration into the daily life of many Americans introduces a regulatory challenge the law is not yet prepared to manage. The core legal gap is straightforward: no federal or state regulatory framework currently requires evaluation, disclosure, mitigation, or planning for the electricity demand created by large-scale AI and data-center growth, despite the fact that these facilities are projected to reshape U.S. energy consumption within the decade.
Read MoreThe Sagebrush Sea is a complex habitat that is much more fragile than it appears. Countless plant and animal species have evolved to rely on each other including species of plants that have evolved to live under and amongst the sagebrush.
Read MoreWhen people think of California, they often picture beaches, Hollywood, and the Golden Gate Bridge. But for millions of people across the state, California has become synonymous with something much darker: devastating wildfires. From 2013 to 2023 alone, nearly 100,000 different fires tore through the state, burning more than 14 million acres. Behind those numbers are families who lost homes, jobs, and entire communities in what felt like the blink of an eye.
Read MoreIn response to the Supreme Court case Sackett v. EPA, 598 U.S. 651, 678 (2023), Colorado’s Governor Polis convened a task force to explore options to ensure Colorado’s waterways stayed protected from dredging and filling activities. The legislation’s intent is to ensure Colorado waters are protected from the repercussions of the Supreme Court’s ruling from Sackett.
Read MoreThe growth and dependency on the mining industry during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries was critical to the United States economy. As a result, mines spread across the country without much thought to mining practices or the corresponding consequences. Today, there are an estimated 140,000 abandoned hard rock mines, with 23,000 located in Colorado, and around 23,000 that may pose environmental concerns.
Read MoreThe Environmental Justice Movement gained momentum in the late 1980s and early 1990s in response to a community in North Carolina being designated as the future site of a hazardous waste landfill riddled with PCB-laced waste. PCBs are a group of manmade chemicals that were used in industrial and commercial settings and were banned in 1979; yet, they do not break down easily in the environment. As a result, PCBs remain in the air, water, and soil, and likely are transported far from their point of origin.
Read MoreSituated along the Georgia-Florida border lies 438,000 acres of the largest blackwater swamp in North America and the largest National Wildlife Refuge in the eastern United States. This is the Okefenokee Swamp. This amazing ecosystem is home to a stunning array of biodiversity, including bald eagles, bobcats, black bears, about 13,000 alligators, and endangered species, including wood storks, indigo snakes, gopher tortoises, and red-cockaded woodpeckers. In addition, more than 850 species of plants, including cypress trees, are over 400 years old. Besides supporting a stunning array of wildlife, this ecosystem attracts 725,000 visitors a year, supports 750 jobs, and generates almost $65 million for the four counties surrounding the swamp. However, an Alabama-based mining company, Twin Pines, LLC, is seeking permits to mine 8,000 acres along the swamp's eastern edge.
Read MoreHow are we to survive the palimpsestic crises of the Anthropocene? By applying the Indigenous traditions of gift economies and reciprocity and the ethic of care tenet of ecofeminism to environmental justice movements, we can find hope for survival. The #NoDAPL protests at Standing Rock demonstrated a living vision of this approach.
Read MoreRenewable energy sources have existed for centuries but in recent decades, have become key to combatting climate change. Prioritizing energy sources with low carbon footprints is critical to managing and reversing temperature increases, water shortages, and other negative impacts that have resulted from generations of fossil fuel use. While wind has been instrumental to this energy transition, offshore wind has greater potential than traditional onshore wind due to the size difference of the turbines. Not only does offshore wind have higher energy capacity but can do so in a much smaller physical footprint than onshore wind. Though the European Union (EU) has been the front runner in offshore wind development, the United States (U.S.) has made tremendous progress over the past two decades with more growth on the horizon.
Read MoreWhile driving west on I-70, there are views of beautiful trees, snow-capped mountains, and also piles of orange/yellow rock dispersed through the trees. These orange scars on Colorado’s hillsides are abandoned hard rock mines and the piles of tailings left behind. Tailings are the byproduct of mines that turn an orange hue over time as they are exposed to the elements. Colorado has nearly 23,000 inactive and abandoned mines out of an estimated 150,000 abandoned mines in the United States. These mines not only pose risks for the curious off-trail hiker who could fall into a collapsed mine, but they also pose the greatest threat to Colorado water quality through the perpetual pollution of acid mine drainage
Read MoreSome pollution is easy to see; plastic waste floating in the ocean or the grey smog that covers city skylines. However, there is a lot of pollution that the everyday American is exposed to that can’t be seen with the naked eye. There is contamination in our food, water, and air. There seems to be more conversation around water contamination with PFAs or the pesticides used on our vegetables, but what about what we breathe each day inside our homes? Indoor air quality can be a threat to our health, and environmentalists and lawyers continue to look for ways to limit a person's exposure to this everyday pollution.
Read MoreIn 1970, the United States produced an estimated 65 billion eggs annually, increasing to an estimated 110 billion eggs a year in 2023. Until about the 1960s, our eggs mainly came from hens that roamed around farms or backyards.
Read MoreFar removed from the traditional livestock practices of the old west, industrial-like Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs) now dominate U.S. livestock production. These CAFOs, commonly referred to as factory farms, are operations in which: (1) animals are kept and raised in confined situations; (2) animals, feed, manure and urine, dead animals, and production operations are maintained on a small land area; and (3) no grazing is allowed; feed is brought to the animals.
Read MoreThe usual biodiversity hotspots in the United States are thought to be Hawai’i, the Rocky Mountains, and maybe even Alaska; however, conservation biologists are looking closer at the Southeastern United States, describing it as one of the world’s biodiversity hotspots. E.O. Wilson reported that the central Gulf Coast states “harbor the most diversity of any part of Eastern North America and probably any part of North America.”
Read MoreKnown for its commitment to sustainability, Sweden has consistently ranked among the top 10 countries globally for exceptional environmental performance for over a decade. Being the first country in the world to pass an environmental protection act in 1967 and host the first ever UN Conference on the Human Environment in 1972, Sweden was a pioneer in sparking conversation related to the treatment and conservation of the environment.
Read MoreThe UN Intergovernmental Conference on Marine Biodiversity of Areas Beyond National Jurisdiction, also known as the BBNJ, was convened in late 2017 to develop a new legally binding instrument under the UN Convention for the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS).
Read MoreArtificial intelligence (AI) has grown exponentially in both its development and use, and in many ways has become inescapable. AI is technology that collects, processes, and uses data to simulate human intelligence processes via technological machines, most commonly computers.
Read MoreDuring the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, river otters and other Rocky Mountain wildlife faced severe challenges because of the rapid increase in industrialization and development in the region. Mining, agriculture, and ranching significantly polluted and destroyed the clean waterways that otters and their prey, including fish, crustaceans, and amphibians relied on.
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