Greenjustice

I was satisfied that if we could tap into the environmental concerns of the general public and infuse the student anti-war energy into the environmental cause, we could generate a demonstration that would force this issue onto the political agenda. It was a big gamble, but worth a try. – Senator Gaylord Nelson, Founder of […]

“A popular Government without popular information or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy, or perhaps both.”    – James Madison As any first year medical or law student can probably tell you, a patient facing an invasive medical treatment must first give the doctor her “informed consent” […]

Last week was Spring Break.  While I can no longer afford to take the entire week off from work, I could not let the week pass without some time for myself away from the classroom and clinic.  Luckily, I was able to spend three amazing days backpacking in the Superstition Mountains, about an hour outside […]

Last week, Colorado Governor Bill Ritter announced a preliminary agreement between the state, Xcel Energy, and some of the region’s traditional environmental groups over a plan to reduce air pollution along the Front Range by retrofitting, repowering (with natural gas), and even possibility retiring a number of urban coal-fired power plants. Although we have to […]

Two years ago I relocated to Denver and inherited from a friend what might possibly be the best job in the world – the directorship of the University of Denver’s Environmental Law Clinic.  In the two decades before my arrival, the clinic had established an impeccable reputation for its work fighting to protect endangered species […]

It’s Sunday morning and I’m on my way home from the Public Interest Environmental Law Conference in Eugene, Ore., the annual convergence of lefty lawyers, scientists, and policy advocates on the frontlines of the fight to preserve the earth.  As usual, the conference afforded a tremendous array of opportunities to learn and be inspired; every […]

With the exception of vocal critics who deny the science behind climate change, most of the world is painfully aware that our industrial activities over recent decades have raised the earth’s average temperature. Our warming atmosphere is putting at risk life as we know it, prompting the people of the world to action. But long-standing […]

“Environmental justice” is a pleasant euphemism for racism. Just as we couched the fight for racial equality during the 1960s comfortably under the guise of civil rights, today we continue to deny our culpability in a bad situation with semantics. In 1988 when a Harlem neighborhood was targeted for the ill-advised location of a sewage […]

Environmental justice law is unlike most other areas of the law.  It may not even be amenable to definition as a single, discrete field of practice.  Instead, environmental justice lawyering is as close as we come to modern-day alchemy: lawyers work in alliance with communities to summon forth justice from a shifting patchwork of unfavorable […]


The environmental movement’s most singular and stunning achievement is the introduction into human history of an awareness of and care for other animals and ecosystems beyond human needs.  The refusal to reduce the earth to a storehouse of resources, the insistence on the value of whales beyond meat and redwoods beyond lumber, the love of […]