Article
What the Pandemic Can Teach Climate Attorneys
Stanford Law Review Online
(2020)
Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic has caused more rapid changes to the law than most of us have seen in our lifetimes. These changes have remade, and in many cases severed, our social and economic connections to each other, in ways unprecedented except during war.
As many have argued, climate change is also a dire emergency, requiring an equally sweeping legal response. Climate change is COVID-19 in slow motion, but with less clarity and far greater destructive capacity.
Lawyers, like legislators and executive branch leaders, are responding to the coronavirus pandemic with creativity and improvisation. We may find that attorneys seeking to address climate change will be able to learn valuable lessons from the legal response to COVID19.
Part I of this Essay, echoing a point that has already been made many times now, explains why, on a practical level, COVID-19 and climate are intertwined. Part II argues that climate attorneys should focus on coronavirus lawsuits, which could be more consequential to climate progress than recent executive or legislative action. Part III of the Essay identifies three specific types of lawsuits climate attorneys should track. And Part IV concludes with a thought for attorneys as we weather this pandemic – and a warming planet – together.
Keywords
- COVID-19,
- coronavirus,
- climate,
- vector,
- migration,
- climate change,
- president,
- executive order
Disciplines
Publication Date
May, 2020
Citation Information
Stanford Law Review Online, Vol. 72 (May 2020).