Several weeks ago, our new book (co-edited with Anastasia Telesetsky and Sarah K. Phillips), Handbook of Comparative Environmental Law was published by Edward Elgard Publishing. [Here is also a direct link to Publisher’s book webpage.] The volume surveys the field of comparative environmental law, highlighting key developments across legal systems, common threads, emerging directions, and areas of continuing uncertainty. Most importantly, it brings a global perspective to the field, covering not only the well-studied nations of the global North but also jurisdictions that have historically received much less attention.

Why this book? The urgency of transnational and global environmental challenges is evident in the daily news – ranging from climate change to biodiversity loss to plastics pollution.  To date, much of the international community’s attention in the search for solutions has focused on the negotiation and adoption of environmental treaties, such as the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change. Yet treaty-based approaches have oftentimes disappointed and underperformed. In the meantime, environmental law at the national level has proliferated and grown ever more sophisticated, complex, and diverse.  Today, robust environmental law is found not only in developed nations but also in emerging economies and the developing world. 

Gaining a better understanding of national environmental law systems, especially how they converge or diverge, is then crucial for several reasons. First, when environmental treaties fail to provide timely solutions, national laws provide important alternative or supplementary pathways to solutions. While not all national environmental regulatory systems are equally effective, law reform efforts can benefit greatly from comparative insights into what approaches work best.

Second, the spread of environmental law across the globe itself has created a pressing need for businesses engaged in transnational deals to possess sophisticated knowledge of foreign regulatory systems; otherwise, they risk liability, delays, or other costs. Finally, as cross-border disputes involving environmental issues become more common, courts and arbitral tribunals themselves must develop a stronger command of comparative environmental law to ensure outcomes that are fair, just, and consistent with applicable legal principles. For lawyers engaged in such transnational disputes, expertise in comparative environmental law will undoubtedly benefit their clients.

What is in the book? Our book is designed to contribute to the broader understanding of comparative environmental law.  With contributions from scholars around the world, it is organized into five parts. Part I offers an overview of the book as well as a primer on comparative environmental law (including an introduction to comparative law study generally). Part II explores planning and sustainability approaches to environmental regulation, including environmental impact assessment, PRTR (Pollution Release and Transfer Registries), and sustainability perspectives.  Part III focuses on rights-based frameworks, including the right to a healthy environment, access to information, indigenous peoples’ rights, and rights of nature. Part IV examines accountability mechanisms, including criminal and non-criminal enforcement, environmental courts, and public interest litigation. Finally, Part V surveys or examines issues arising in a number of sectors, ranging from contaminated lands and energy to water pollution and water rights, mining, food waste, biodiversity and air pollution.

In future blogposts, I will highlight some of the most thought-provoking trends that our contributors have identified.  In the meantime, I welcome your thoughts or comments.

I have been trying out ChatGPT to explore its capabilities. And my one-sentence conclusion after using it to ask some very basic/simple greenhouse gas emission-related questions: Use ChatGPT with extreme caution and expect errors, even on simple data questions.

Here is a slightly expanded explanation. I asked ChatGPT about the GHG emissions for China, the US, and the globe . According to ChatGPT, China’s share of global GHG emissions was 28%, while the US share was 15% for 2021. In terms of absolute number, it also indicated that China’s 2019 emissions were 10.17 gigatons of carbon dioxide carbonequivalents and US emissions in 2019 were 5.41 gigatons (based on information from the Global Carbon Project). This seemed plausible (and was close to what I found when checking the Global Carbon Project website directly). However, it then gave global GHG emissions for 2019 at 59.1 gigatons – that of course does not plausibly match up with the numbers and percentages for the US and China. Based on the 2019 US and China numbers, global emission should be to 36 gigatons.

It seems likely that it served up numbers that encompassed different GHG sources, i.e. possibly including land use emissions in one set of numbers and ignoring them in the other. In any event, I was surprised that Chatgpt provided internally inconsistent answers. When challenged, here is what ChatGPT said:

“You are correct that the numbers I provided in my previous answers were inconsistent. I apologize for the confusion and any misinformation that may have caused. According to the latest available data from the Global Carbon Project, China’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in 2019 were approximately 14.1 gigatons of carbon dioxide equivalent (GtCO2e), which is about 30% of global emissions. The United States was the second-largest emitter with approximately 4.9 GtCO2e or about 11% of global emissions. Global GHG emissions in 2019 were indeed around 59 GtCO2e, as you mentioned. The largest sources of global GHG emissions are energy-related emissions from burning fossil fuels for electricity, transportation, and industry, as well as emissions from agriculture, land use, and waste management. Again, I apologize for any confusion my previous answers may have caused, and I hope this clarifies the correct information about global and Chinese GHG emissions in 2019.”

Better explanation, but … still 🤔 ｢(ﾟﾍﾟ) ｢(･ิ.･ิ) ｢(‘◉⌓◉’)

Of course, I should have noted that many people have reported ChatGPT making serious mistakes and providing wildly wrong answers. But I thought a simple data information request should be a softball – not much different from a traditional search engine query. But clearly not so. Too bad that ChatGPT cannot even be trusted for some simple data queries.