Georgetown Law Alumni Magazine - Res Ipsa Loquitur
Fall/Winter 2009 - Online Volume 2
Lectures and Events
New State-Federal Climate Resource Center Opens at Georgetown Law
Changing the country’s direction on climate change will require “lots of thought about what’s legal, what’s illegal, what’s good policy [and] what’s bad policy,” said EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson, who was on campus February 23 to help launch Georgetown Law’s new State-Federal Climate Resource Center.
“This new center at Georgetown means a great deal to the law school, and we hope that it will provide an important new voice [to the] policy debate of our day,” said Dean Alex Aleinikoff as he welcomed attendees and speakers including then Gov. Kathleen Sebelius of Kansas and Gov. Chris Gregoire of Washington. Professor Peter Byrne, the center’s faculty director, introduced Nancy Sutley, chair of the White House Council on Environmental Quality. Nearly 250 people — from state cabinets and agencies, environmental organizations, think tanks, businesses and law firms — rounded out the crowd. Georgetown Law alumni, faculty, staff and students were equally well represented. “We’re delighted that we’ll be working with state and local governments as we try to provide a bridge between those governments and the federal government,” Aleinikoff said. “We can’t really be better located than we are here, we don’t think, to provide that bridge.”
Jackson said that the Center will provide not only a voice for the states but also a resource for them as they cope with the day-to-day problems of climate change. And the states, Jackson predicted, will be important contributors to solving those problems.
Jackson also thanked Georgetown for “lending” Lisa Heinzerling — the Georgetown Law professor who was named senior climate counsel to the EPA administrator in January and was recently promoted to associate administrator for the EPA’s Office of Policy, Economics and Innovation. “I should apologize for depriving you of the ability to take a class from her,” Jackson told the many law students present for the center’s launch.
Executive Director Vicki Arroyo (L’94) said she looked forward to working with other organizations to inform the federal dialogue on climate policy. The Climate Center will focus on four goals: shaping environmental legislation; increasing efficiency, reducing emissions and lowering greenhouse gases through regulation; developing policy approaches to transportation; and adapting to changes such as rising sea levels, wildfires and drought.
Fortunately, this last challenging goal just became a bit easier. As Arroyo announced, the Rockefeller Foundation recently awarded a new $500,000 grant to support the Center’s adaptation work. The initial funders — the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and the Emily Hall Tremaine Foundation — were also recognized for their contributions. “We are feeling the adverse effects of climate change,” Arroyo said. “We need to plan for and respond to these changes and anticipate how our policies and laws need to change to accommodate the everchanging world in which we find ourselves.”
And even in the first few months, the Center has been busy. In May it played a key role in bringing together 30 governors who signed a statement of principles regarding climate change and energy policy and called on Congress to pass legislation that creates clean energy. And in June it co-sponsored the State-Federal Workshop on Climate Change in Washington, D.C., with the Pew Center on Global Climate Change.
At the Center’s opening in February, Sebelius spoke just days before her nomination by President Barack Obama to head the Department of Health and Human Services. She noted that past attempts to plan for climate change and reduce greenhouse gases “have really been uniquely at the state level.” Now, with the new center, there’s not only an opportunity for dialogue but a means to take state initiatives in this area to a national level and beyond, she said.
Gregoire discussed the environmental debate in the western states, noting that in her past four years in office, she’s had to make more emergency declarations than ever in the history of the state. “We, as a coastal state, are a perfect example that if we don’t get going, the consequences are so severe to us. … We don’t have an alternative but to move forward.”
