A new course examines the wide-ranging implications of law for climate change
By Rachel Reed, Harvard Law School
One of the first things students learn in Richard J. Lazarus’ new Climate Lawyering course is that if climate law was ever a niche field, it is no longer.
Or, as Brandon Deutsch ’24 puts it, “Climate touches everything.”
Indeed, concerns about climate change are not limited to entities like the Environmental Protection Agency or the Department of Energy. Today, even agencies such as the Department of Defense and the Securities and Exchange Commission are considering the effects of climate change on the nation, our world, and our ways of life.
“The threat of potentially catastrophic consequences from climate change due to increasing concentrations of greenhouse gas in the atmosphere is both enormous and unyielding,” says Lazarus ’79, the Howard and Katherine Aibel Professor of Law at Harvard. “To date, however, our nation has mostly stumbled in its efforts to craft laws that meet the immense challenge of reducing domestic greenhouse gas emissions and that redress the massive adverse effects of climate change that can no longer be avoided during our own lifetimes.”
As daunting as the problem may be, however, Lazarus’ course makes clear that the scope of the issue also means there are countless opportunities for aspiring climate lawyers to make a difference.