Energy information and technology has reached a point where the operator of a twenty-first-century grid can balance supply and demand based on value, not cost. Better data, more distributed and dynamic resources, and improvements in supporting infrastructure represent an opportunity for an electric system to operate more reliably with less environmental impact and through competitive markets that yield economically efficient rates.
In 2016, the Third Circuit affirmed the dismissal of a nonprofit group’s environmental citizen suit because it found that a government agency was already diligently prosecuting the defendant. The decision provided an important procedural precedent because it changed the standard by which agency prosecution is reviewed during a motion to dismiss.
Under the Clean Water Act, a troubling regulatory gap exists wherein the federal government is unable to directly regulate diffuse sources of water pollution in interstate waters. This gap has left many of the nation’s most important watersheds flooded with nutrient pollution from agricultural runoff, contrary to the purpose of the statute.
The idea of nature as a stable and predictable counterpoint to the disruptive energy and change of human societies is at the heart of one of the most enduring environmental writing traditions, the pastoral. Moreover, a related rhetorical convention, the pastoral elegy, distinguishes the nature writing and environmental philosophy of postcolonial settler societies “marked by the death and/or dispossession of their original inhabitants.”
