News in Environmental Law and Campus Woods Resources

There's been some exciting progress this month with environmental protections at the federal legislative level. After the U.S. Senate passed the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, Biden signed a sweeping climate, health care, and tax bill into law. According to NPR News, the bill includes $60 billion dollars toward subsidizing green energy technologies and infrastructures, mitigating pollution, and working toward environmental justice. Scientific American also notes that the bill will invest "hundreds of billions of dollars into the clean energy projects needed to decarbonize the economy." From the New York Times: The law was written with language that explicitly "addresses the Supreme Court’s justification for reining in the E.P.A., a ruling that was one of the court’s most consequential of the term. The new law amends the Clean Air Act, the country’s bedrock air-quality legislation, to define the carbon dioxide produced by the burning of fossil fuels as an 'air pollutant.' That language, according to legal experts as well as the Democrats who worked it into the legislation, explicitly gives the E.P.A. the authority to regulate greenhouse gases and to use its power to push the adoption of wind, solar and other renewable energy sources."

Throughout the semester, I'll post links to current environmental news or other related topics that come up in class. You can also keep up with the latest environmental news from Science Daily. For more information on old growth forest, go to Old-Growth Forest Network or Forest Stewards Guild.  Meanwhile, be sure to check out the library resource page for our class, which should be useful when doing research for your Place History stories about the Campus Woods. Also take some time to watch this video from Dr. Lance Green, where he provides a fascinating archaeological survey of the woods and its long history of human habitation dating as far back as 9,500 years ago. We had a great start to our exploration of the woods during our trail walk yesterday and I enjoyed hearing everyone's observations. I hope you got lots of interesting photos and ideas for exploring further in your Woods Journals. Here are some pictures that I took on my walk Tuesday: a doe with her fawn on the access trail (there was another pair staying concealed in the woods) and a katydid doing a great camouflaging act with the greenery.