Methane is estimated to be responsible for one-third of the global rise in temperatures from greenhouse gases; it is shorter-lived but much more potent than carbon dioxide. The United States and the European Union (E.U.) launched the Global Methane Pledge at the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26). At COP28’s Global Methane Pledge Ministerial last December, new strategies were announced, including the E.U.’s first-ever adoption of methane regulations and a final rule by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to reduce methane from the oil and gas industry. On January 31, 2024, the Environmental Law Institute hosted a panel of experts to analyze these regulations, discuss strategies other countries are employing to reduce emissions, and consider whether these efforts will meet 2030 goals. This Dialogue presents a transcript of that discussion, which has been edited for style, clarity, and space considerations.

As marketers across the fashion industry increasingly tout “circularity” initiatives, the reality remains that exponentially more clothes are being produced, purchased, and promptly thrown away than ever before. This Comment focuses on governmental responses to the environmental crisis created by textile waste that promote circularity in the fashion industry through extended producer responsibility (EPR) regulation of textiles. It provides a brief overview of EPR as a policy approach more broadly, and examines how EPR laws have been previously implemented in other sectors at the state level as well as outside of the United States; evaluates two recently proposed state senate bills (California’s Responsible Textile Recovery Act of 2023 and New York State Senate Bill (S.B.) 6654/Assembly Bill (A.B.) 8078), and concludes with recommendations for policymakers and other stakeholders, including fashion brands, to promote a more circular economy moving forward.

In July 2023, the International Maritime Organization (IMO) resolved to reduce international shipping’s greenhouse gas emissions to net zero “by or around, i.e., close to” 2050. There is a long-running debate about whether the sector should decarbonize and how it could do so in a way that is equitable for states and the shipping industry. This Article is the first to normatively define shipping’s fair share of the overall climate mitigation burden using principles of international environmental law. It refers to the IMO’s institutional rules and practice to identify relevant principles, evaluates emission reduction pathways based on the sector’s technological potential, and determines that its fair share would be its highest possible ambition in light of its unique capacity to mitigate. The Article ties shipping’s climate goals to a framework of international environmental law, and offers a structure to assess its ambition going forward.

Supplemental environmental projects (SEPs) have received a growing amount of attention in recent years, from the Donald Trump Administration banning their use in settlements, to regulation and guidance from the Joseph Biden Administration reversing the ban, to legislative proposals prohibiting them altogether. This Article examines SEPs’ legality under existing law, focusing on claims that they violate the Miscellaneous Receipts Act and the Antideficiency Act. It begins with a brief history of SEPs’ policy evolution and the limitations on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s and U.S. Department of Justice’s (DOJ’s) settlement discretion. It then examines claims that SEPs are unlawful, focusing on arguments made in a 2020 DOJ policy memo. It concludes that the 2020 analysis is flawed, masking policy preferences under the guise of statutory interpretation; and that opponents’ arguments ignore long-standing legal distinctions between payments negotiated in settlements and penalties assigned by a judge following a finding of liability.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) enforcement program has long been the backbone of environmental enforcement in the United States. That program may now be bound for dramatic change. This Article analyzes the threats posed to the Agency’s program by the U.S. Supreme Court’s forthcoming decision in Securities and Exchange Commission v. Jarkesy, in which three constitutional questions presented cut to the core of administrative enforcement. The Court’s decision there will foreshadow the outcome of similar challenges currently facing EPA, and the Agency’s historically robust enforcement apparatus may depend on its ability to distinguish its administrative enforcement from the SEC’s. Jarkesy and similar challenges to the foundations of administrative law signal that a reimagining of environmental enforcement in the United States may soon be necessary.