New Economy Law Center

UN Issues “Harmony With Nature” Summary Report (2016)

September 13, 2016

Dana Drugmand

In August the United Nations General Assembly issued a summary report based on a UN-initiated virtual dialogue among experts in Earth jurisprudence with regards to advancing global sustainability in harmony with nature. The dialogue focused on aligning human governance systems with an Earth-centered perspective. Experts discussed developments and recommendations for doing so across eight disciplines, including: Earth-centered law; ecological economics; education; holistic science; the humanities; philosophy and ethics; the arts, media, design and architecture; and theology and spirituality.

Read the full report here – http://www.un.org/en/ga/search/view_doc.asp?symbol=A/71/266

Several NELC Fellows participated in the virtual dialogue. Linda Sheehan offered her expertise in Earth-centered law, while Peter Brown and Joshua Farley contributed input in the area of ecological economics. See below for their individual pieces.

Linda Sheehan – http://www.harmonywithnatureun.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/DialogueInputs/LindaSheehan.EarthLaw.pdf

Peter Brown – http://www.harmonywithnatureun.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/DialogueInputs/PeterG.Brown.EcologicalEconomics.pdf

Joshua Farley – http://www.harmonywithnatureun.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/DialogueInputs/JoshuaFarley.EcologicalEconomics.pdf

Restoring Power to Hawai’i: (Missed) Opportunities for Energy Justice on the Road to 100% Renewable Energy

September 6, 2016

Dana Drugmand

In June 2015 Hawaii became the first state in the nation to formally commit to 100 percent clean, renewable power generation. A year later, the island archipelago is facing some critical choices in how to get to that goal. NELC Fellow and VLS Distinguished Energy Law Scholar for 2016, Prof. Shalanda Baker, describes these choices under the current regulatory structure and their implications for energy policy and energy justice.

Shalanda H. Baker, Assoc. Prof. of Law and Environmental Law Program Faculty Advisor at University of Hawai’i at Manoa, “Restoring Power to Hawai’i: (Missed) Opportunities for Energy Justice on the Road to 100% Renewable Energy,” Hot Topics in Environmental Law lecture at VLS, June 9, 2016

View the video here.

Linda Sheehan – “Commentary on ‘Against Ecocide: Legal Protection for Earth'”

August 30, 2016

Dana Drugmand

A global movement is coalescing advancing systemic change in the law through enacting nature’s rights provisions as well as through legal activism promoting international recognition of ecocide as a fifth crime against peace. Femke Wijdekop discusses the latter development in a new piece for the Great Transition Initiative. In the following commentary, Earth Law Center Executive Director and NELC Senior Fellow Linda Sheehan responds to this piece reflecting on the role of legal activism and strategies for pushing ecocentric systemic reform forward.

Linda Sheehan, “Commentary on ‘Against Ecocide: Legal Protection for Earth,” Great Transition Initiative (August 2016), http://www.greattransition.org/commentary/linda-sheehan-against-ecocide-femke-wijdekop

Commoning as a Transformative Social Paradigm

August 23, 2016

Dana Drugmand

In this paper produced for the Next System Project, NELC Associate Fellow David Bollier introduces the commons as a social paradigm capable of transcending the current oppressive system. In particular, Bollier examines the commons as an alternative to the neoliberal political economy and presents a commoning vision and approach for achieving a more ecologically sustainable and humane society.

http://thenextsystem.org/commoning-as-a-transformative-social-paradigm/

Protected: New Economy Book Chapters

August 4, 2016

Rebecca Milaschewski

In New Zealand, Lands and Rivers Can Be People (Legally Speaking)

July 21, 2016

Dana Drugmand

New Zealand is taking bold steps to evolve its legal system by recognizing “legal personhood” status and rights for natural systems, including rivers and forests. Arising from agreements to settle treaty violations with indigenous Maori, the recognition of the Te Urewera Forest and the Whanganui River as legal entities is a growing approach (following related efforts in Ecuador and elsewhere) for shifting law towards a more ethical, eco-centric standard.

“In New Zealand, Lands and Rivers Can Be People (Legally Speaking),” The New York Times, July 13, 2016

Earth Law

July 20, 2016

Dana Drugmand

NELC Fellow Linda Sheehan, Executive Director of Earth Law Center, teaches this Summer Term course at VLS

Course Description:

Climate change and other global threats are increasingly illustrating the limits of our existing environmental laws to stem degradation. This course posits that environmental declines will continue until we address a fundamental assumption underlying our legal system: that humans are separate from the natural world and may treat it as property to be exploited, rather than as a connected ecological partner. The course will critically examine the sources of this assumption and its impacts on preventing us from achieving a healthy, thriving planet. It will then describe legal, economic, and other governance systems that recognize the inherent rights of the natural world to exist, thrive, and evolve, and it will discuss how such systems can be implemented to advance lasting sustainability. Specific applications will be highlighted, debated, and practiced.

Syllabus – Summer 2016

A Radical Alliance of Black and Green Could Save the World

May 19, 2016

Courtney Collins

Click through to read the article, “A Radical Alliance of Black and Green
Could Save the World” by James Gustave Speth and J. Philip Thomson III, in The Nation, April 14, 2016.

VLS Energy Clinic White River Community Solar News

May 5, 2016

Kevin Jones

Vermont Public Radio recently featured the VLS Energy Clinic’s White River Community Solar project that we have been developing with our community partners Building a Local Economy (BALE) and Putting Down Roots Farm. Putting Down Roots Farm is a local CSA business that has agreed to host the 150 kW community solar array which will be directly owned by the local participants and developed by our local solar partner Catamount Solar. This story features a discussion of the challenges facing community solar, including the challenge of utility net metering caps and the competition for interconnection capacity with projects that are neither locally owned or solar for the local community. Our Energy Clinic continues to work to advance true community solar and we welcome collaboration with new partners in this effort. We can be contacted at energy clinic@vermontlaw.edu

http://digital.vpr.net/post/net-metering-cap-leaves-community-solar-projects-across-state-limbo

Call for Papers, ClassCrits IX The New Corporatocracy and Election 2016

April 17, 2016

Martha McCluskey

The ClassCrits Network invites paper and panel proposals for our upcoming conference, The New Corporatocracy and Election 2016, Oct. 21-22, 2016 at Loyola University Chicago School of Law and Business Law Center. We are a group of scholars, students and activists interested in critical analysis of economic inequality and the law, founded in a commitment to integrating economic justice with racial, gender, sexual, environmental justice and beyond. We welcome papers on a range of topics related to those goals as well as specifically on this year’s theme of corporate political power. Abstracts for proposed papers can be submitted by May 16, 2016 to classcrits@gmail.com, and for more information see https://classcrits.wordpress.com/2016/03/16/classcrits-ix-call-for-papers-and-participation/.

New Book Explores Shift to New Economy May 25, 2017
Many NELC Fellows just completed a major collaboration to produce a new book exploring the laws and policies supporting the shift to a new economy. Covering a variety of areas from food to energy to the commons and Earth rights, the book addresses the laws and values for undertaking comprehensive system change. NELC Fellows contributing to […]
Dana Drugmand
Pat Parenteau on Justice Gorsuch filling Supreme Court vacancy May 5, 2017
Trump’s highly anticipated Supreme Court pick, conservative Judge Neil Gorsuch, recently assumed his position in the nation’s highest court. What does this imply for environmental law going forward? New Economy Law Center Fellow Pat Parenteau provides some insight into this question in the following opinion piece for Grist. Patrick Parenteau. “Gorsuch likely to be skeptical […]
Dana Drugmand
Gus Speth: The Joyful Economy April 24, 2017
In a new piece published in the sixth volume of Next System Project’s “New Systems: Possibilities and Proposals” series, NSP co-chair and New Economy Law Center co-founder Gus Speth presents the case for transforming our political economy, and offers a possible vision for an alternative system that prioritizes people, place, and planet over profit and […]
Dana Drugmand
NELC Fellow Inspires Global Tax March Movement April 13, 2017
This Saturday, April 15th – traditionally designated as “Tax Day,” – tens of thousands of people will take to the streets in cities across the globe in protest of President Donald Trump’s refusal to release his tax returns. The idea for a “Tax March” originated with Vermont Law School professor, and New Economy Law Center […]
Dana Drugmand
Law and Economics: Contemporary Approaches April 11, 2017
Conventional neoclassical economics and traditional law curriculum are too confining and outdated to address contemporary challenges. This paper argues that “the urgent challenges of the 21st Century also call for a new Law and Economics.” New Economy Law Center Fellows Martha McCluskey, Frank Pasquale, and Jennifer Taub authored the paper in response to Yale Law […]
Dana Drugmand
Rethinking Sustainability to Meet the Climate Change Challenge March 29, 2017
Contributing authors – including New Economy Law Center Fellows Sarah Krakoff and Pat Parenteau – offer ideas for re-examining and re-evaluating the concept of sustainability within the complex context of anthropogenic climate change. Jessica Owley and Keith Hirokawa (ed.) Rethinking Sustainability to Meet the Climate Change Challenge, Environmental Law Institute: Washington DC, 2015, https://www.eli.org/eli-press-books/rethinking-sustainability-meet-climate-change-challenge
Dana Drugmand
Beyond Uneconomic Growth: Economics, Equity and the Ecological Predicament March 10, 2017
“We urgently require an economic system that prioritizes ecological sustainability, just distribution and obligations to future generations…” (p.11), writes New Economy Law Center Fellow Joshua Farley in the introduction to a new book on ecological economics. In Beyond Uneconomic Growth, Farley provides an introductory synopsis on why a new economic system – inspired by Herman […]
Dana Drugmand
Next System Project Publishes “New Systems: Volume Five” Presenting Four New Models for Political-Economic Alternatives March 2, 2017
Gus Speth, co-founder of the New Economy Law Center and co-chair of the Next System Project, announced a new edition in NSP’s “New Systems: Possibilities and Proposals” series. The four models highlighted in Volume Five of the series include the “Economy for the Common Good (ECG),” Paul Raskin’s vision of “Earthland,” Michael Shuman’s “The Promise […]
Dana Drugmand
Panel Discusses “Environmental Advocacy Under a New Administration” February 21, 2017
With Donald Trump now in the White House, environmentalists are left wondering how they can fight back against an administration hostile to climate action and environmental protection. Do we turn to the courts, or take to the streets, or both? Last month Vermont Law School’s Environmental Law Society presented a panel discussion, “Environmental Advocacy Under […]
Dana Drugmand
Juliana v. United States: Does the Constitution Guarantee a Livable Planet for Our Kids? February 7, 2017
Climate science and policy is under attack from the new Trump administration, but this assault faces a legal roadblock in the form of a group of young plaintiffs asserting their right to a livable climate. The landmark case Juliana v. U.S. survived a motion to dismiss and is now proceeding to what observers expect to […]
Dana Drugmand