Looking Ahead at Climate Change and Federal Policy
It has been a rough six months for climate change advocates. The policy changes from former President Obama to the new Trump Administration have been like night and day. In an effort to help digest these changes, Temple Law School’s Sheller Center for Social Justice hosted its fourth lecture in a series titled Making Sense of the Legal Headlines, focusing this time on Climate Change and Federal Policy. Temple Law Professor Amy Sinden facilitated the lecture, with assistance from third year law student Alec Zucker. Professor Sinden and Mr. Zucker did an excellent job at summarizing the major concerns associated with the current climate change crisis while bringing the audience up to speed regarding recent policy changes from our nation’s capital. With regard to the climate crisis, the bad news is that global temperatures are continuing to rise in the aggregate (2016 was the hottest year globally on record), and the change goes beyond warming. It includes both more extreme and more unpredictable weather patterns—droughts, floods, snow storms, heat waves, wildfires and so on. As …