Although the working-from-home transition has been underway for some time, it accelerated dramatically during the COVID-19 pandemic, and it may lead to permanent shifts in the workplace for millions of employees. Using an efficiency and justice lens, this Article examines the standards regarding working-from-home emissions and concludes that undercounting could occur, could unfairly burden workers, and could increase net emissions. The Article proposes changes in emissions reporting standards to address these concerns, including amending or interpreting the standards to require employers to account for employee working-from-home-related emissions in corporate emissions reports.
We are honored to introduce the Ecology Law Quarterly’s 2020–21 Annual Review of Environmental and Natural Resource Law. Now in its twenty-second year, the Annual Review is a collaborative endeavor of students and faculty. But the greatest contributors to the Annual Review are Ecology Law Quarterly's (ELQ) editorial board and members. ELQ continues to be the leading journal in the field because of their passion and commitment.
In County of Maui v. Hawai’i Wildlife Fund, the Supreme Court held that “the statute requires a permit when there is a direct discharge from a point source into navigable waters or when there is the functional equivalent of a direct discharge.” The Court thus confirmed that some discharges traveling from point sources to navigable waters via intermediate nonnavigable and non-point- source “conduits” require permitting under the Clean Water Act. However, the meaning of “functional equivalence” was left ambiguous, and the Court’s proposed list of factors to determine functional equivalence was incomplete. This standard and its attendant factors, if applied incorrectly, risk undermining the purpose of the Clean Water Act.
Since their inception, administrative agencies have played a critical role in setting the trajectory of national regulatory schemes. Over the last several decades, agencies have become increasingly responsive to executive policy positions. Though executive control of agency action has long been accepted as a desirable system of accountability, the increasingly partisan and politicized nature of executive policymaking has consequences, including a lack of transparency and a departure from the legislative purpose for agency regulation.