Entering the new world of blogging, my goal is to attempt to provide interesting and topical information on the developments and interrelationships between law and the environment. Having practiced environmental law for twenty years, I hope to use this relatively new technology and forum for communication to reach out to those like me who are either involved in environmental issues and environmental regulation or who are interested in how laws and regulation affect how we as a society impact our natural environment, ecosystems, the natural cycles, such as the climate and the carbon cycle, to various other effects on the natural world that surrounds us.
Having represented companies, banks, partnerships, non profit organizations, and various other organizations and entities as well as individuals, I have learned a great deal about the issues and strategies that allow these organizations and people to address environmental liabilities and restrictions on the one hand and environmental opportunities and benefits on the other. I hope through this blog to communicate this experience and new developments and observations from my own practice and the review of various periodicals, new statutes and regulations, and new court decisions, as well as other sources of news and information.
One thing I have observed is that environmental laws and regulations often create new developments and, at times, unintended consequences. I have perhaps a unique view of the manner in which these developments emerge having started my career path with plans of becoming an ecologist, but departed that path to pursue environmental law. A lasting influence of my training, education, and scientific research in ecology has been a profound interest in the means by which laws and corporate behavior evolve in the greater context or “ecosystem “ of the influence of government, stakeholders, and market participants. The interrelationships and complex interactions that I observed in natural ecosystems appear and emerge in economies and corporations.
Using this understanding and view of our society, economy, and regulatory system, I look forward to observing and reporting on the evolution of corporate environmental governance and corporate social responsibility, as well as corporate environmental policies and actions and environmental financial and social responsibility reporting.
As new environmental issues such as climate change lead to changes in regulatory structure, I will observe and report on the new corporate behavior and public reporting that emerges from these new legal restrictions. The emergence of the carbon trading markets in the EU and much of the developing world through the structure of the Kyoto Protocol and the EU Emission Trading System Scheme presents an amazing example as to how behavior can change over time and new systems emerge from the establishment of new legal rules.
Discussing environment laws, environmental management, environmental disclosure, and the emergency of new activities and systems is what I will endeavor to bring to this blog. I hope you will join me as I embark on this new adventure.
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