Endangered Species Act Listings and Climate Change: Avoiding the Elephant in the Room

Contributor Roles

Kya B. Marienfeld, J.D. 2014, Lewis & Clark Law School

Document Type

Article

Publication Title

Animal Law Review

Version

pre-publication

Journal Abbreviation

Animal L.

Abstract

The Endangered Species Act (ESA), with its reputation as the nation’s strongest environmental law, might be expected to impose some limits on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions adversely affecting listed species due to rising global temperatures. Although the federal government recently ended a long period of denial by conceding that some species warrant listing because of climate change, the accompanying listing decisions revealed a federal refusal to apply the ESA to constrain GHG emissions causing the listings. In this article, we explain those decisions — involving the American pika, the polar bear, the wolverine, and the Gunnison sage-grouse — and their implications. We conclude with some surprising observations about the Obama Administration’s apparent endorsement of Justice Scalia’s approach to the ESA’s habitat protections, the Administration’s use of constitutional standing rules to limit the effective scope of the statute, the growing significance of the distinction between endangered and threatened species, and the unintended boomerang effects of the administrative reforms of the statute in the 1990s.

First Page

277

Last Page

310

Publication Date

2014

Link to Full Text

Share

COinS