Vermont Law School’s Environmental Law Center (ELC) and the Vermont Journal of Environmental Law (VJEL) unveil the fourth annual Top 10 Environmental Watch List.
In past years, the Watch List covered a variety of environmental issues. In light of breaching a significant climate change level for atmospheric carbon dioxide, this year’s Watch List focuses on the legal and policy actions that hope to address—or prepare us to endure—impending climate change catastrophes.
In 2013 atmospheric carbon dioxide levels surpassed a key threshold of 400 parts per million for the first time since scientists began tracking atmospheric carbon levels, according to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Mauna Loa monitoring station in Hawaii. The last time we reached this threshold was 3 million years ago when temperatures on Earth were 2 to 3 degrees Celsius higher than pre-industrial times and sea levels about 20 meters (or 66 feet higher) than today’s sea level, according to the London School of Economics.