Climate Change Practice Areas
Posted By Rob Millard - 1 Comments -
Holland & Hart has joined the small but growing ranks of law firms with a dedicated practice group focused on legal issues surrounding climate change / global warming. This according to an article in the Denver Business Journal. I haven't time to search anything like a comprehensive list of other law firms that have established climate change practice groups, but to date they include Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman, Morrison & Foerster, Davis Wright Tremaine. If your firm also has a climate change practice group, or you know of any others, please post the details in comments below so that readers of this blog can take note.
The Department of Geosciences at the University of Arizona has a truly excellent interactive set of maps, one of the whole world and one of North America, that illustrate the levels of inundation that will occur with different degrees of sea level increase. It is truly terrifying! Even with just a three foot (one meter) increase, for instance, much of Florida disappears. (See below.) Countries like Bangladesh and the Maldives would cease to exist.
This is obviously decades away at least. (Predictions for the next few decades seem to vary from a few centimeters to upwards of one meter depending in no small measure, I suspect, upon the agenda behind the research or report.) I think that law firms that are establishing themselves in these areas will find no shortage of work in the interim, though, around spin-off issues like carbon trading, clean technology and alternative / sustainable energy, to say nothing of general sustainability governance, as public opinion around these issues escalates. Certainly, public opinion seems to be approaching a tipping point in this area, if it has not already been reached.
Remember: It is pointless to aim one's strategy only at what the market / clients want today; worse to aim it at what the market / clients have wanted in the past. Time will elapse before the strategy is fully executed, so one has to think about what the market / clients will want in the forseeable future, and aim the strategy at delivering that. As ice hockey star Wayne Gretzky once said: "Some people skate to the puck. I skate to where the puck is going to be."
Comments, as always, are most welcome. Please post them below.
Miami area following a 1 meter rise in sea level (red areas indicate areas of inundation.)
Trackbacks (0)
Links to blogs that reference this article
Trackback URL
http://www.robmillard.com/admin/trackback/22368
http://www.robmillard.com/admin/trackback/22368
Rob, for a different take on global warming, watch or read the talk "Fear, Complexity, & Environmental Management in the 21st Century" given by Dr. Michael Crichton here:
http://www.complexsys.org/news.htm#
Post A Comment / Question
