It isn’t a joke to my knowledge, and you’re right – the bill is definitely drafted in broad strokes that could likely sweep in a large array of activities outside of climate engineering research or deployment.
Professor Tracy Hester University of Houston Law Center 100 Law Center Houston, Texas 77204 713-743-1152 [email protected] Web bio: www.law.uh.edu/faculty/thester From: Ken Caldeira <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> Date: Sunday, March 22, 2015 at 6:41 PM To: Tracy Hester <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> Cc: "[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>" <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> Subject: Re: [geo] First U.S. state proposed legislation on climate engineering If this is real and not a joke, and it passes in its present form, it seems as if someone in Rhode Island could potentially be fined and imprisoned for planting a tree with the intent of absorbing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. _______________ Ken Caldeira Carnegie Institution for Science Dept of Global Ecology 260 Panama Street, Stanford, CA 94305 USA +1 650 704 7212 [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> website: http://dge.stanford.edu/labs/caldeiralab/ blog: http://kencaldeira.org<http://kencaldeira.org/> @KenCaldeira My assistant is Dawn Ross <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>>, with access to incoming emails. Postdoc positions available in my group: https://jobs.carnegiescience.edu/jobs/dge/ On Sun, Mar 22, 2015 at 3:03 PM, Hester, Tracy <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: We now have possibly the first state proposed legislation in the United States to control climate engineering efforts. A bill (H-5480) was recently introduced in the Rhode Island legislature that would require any climate engineering efforts to undergo an approval process and two (at least) public hearings. The bill would impose fines and up to 90 days imprisonment for each day that the unapproved climate engineering continues. The bill also gives Rhode Island's environmental agency the ability to enjoin and halt an unapproved project. If you’d like to get more details, you can review the bill itself at http://webserver.rilin.state.ri.us/BillText/BillText15/HouseText15/H5480.pdf These local initiatives might pop up in other state legislatures if climate engineering research gains momentum (especially after the NAS reports last month). If so, the prospect of overlapping or conflicting regulations from multiple states will often spur the federal government to impose its own consolidated regulatory scheme to preempt the state efforts. Professor Tracy Hester University of Houston Law Center 100 Law Center Houston, Texas 77204 713-743-1152<tel:713-743-1152> [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> Web bio: www.law.uh.edu/faculty/thester<http://www.law.uh.edu/faculty/thester> -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "geoengineering" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/geoengineering. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "geoengineering" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/geoengineering. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
