Vermont Law School's Environmental Law Center launched its first annual Top 10 Environmental Watch List today. Environmental faculty and students researched more than 75 judicial, regulatory and legislative actions before selecting what they consider the 10 most important environmental law and policy issues of 2010.
1. Congressional failure to enact climate change legislation.
2. The nation's worst oil spill.
3. First U.S. greenhouse gas rules.
4. Climate change in the courts.
5. California's climate law dodges a bullet.
6. EPA clamps down on mountaintop removal coal mining.
7. Wind and solar projects make breakthroughs.
8. Supreme Court reviews genetically modified crops.
9. EPA's water transfer exemption remains in force.
10. U.S. military going green.
The Top 10 Environmental Watch List report is available at http://watchlist.vermontlaw.edu/.
The list provides some interesting insight confirming that climate change as well as energy-related considerations increasingly are the focus of key environmental law concerns. This trend certainly will continue in 2011.