Canada’s federal ministry of the environment and climate change recently announced it will review Output-Based Pricing System (OBPS) regulations with an eye to increasing emission reductions, covering additional industrial activities, correcting current standards not aligned with activities performed by participating facilities, and improving efficiency.

Canada’s department of the environment and climate change recently announced it is developing first phase federal carbon offset protocols for advanced refrigeration systems, forest management, landfill methane management, and “enhanced soil organic carbon” (presumably referring to what is commonly known as regenerative agriculture).

If implemented, EU carbon border adjustments would place a duty on imports from jurisdictions lacking a sufficient price on carbon emissions. This would protect European industries subject to the bloc’s carbon pricing system from competition with producers in countries with weaker environmental laws, as well as ‘leakage’, wherein businesses relocate operations to environmentally lax jurisdictions to increase cost competitiveness (i.e., ‘offshoring pollution’).

With a series of executive orders, Biden’s early administrative moves seek to quickly reverse years of catastrophic Trump administration anti-environment, anti-science policy, and start making up for lost ground in advancing America’s environment and climate policy progress.

In its recent report One Year On: BlackRock still addicted to fossil fuels, French sustainable finance organization Reclaim Finance details how American financial giant BlackRock’s public declaration to make sustainability its new investing standard has, one year later, yielded only “half-hearted” and “superficial” results.

Ontario’s recent omnibus Bill 229, ostensibly directed at addressing the COVID-19 pandemic and its economic consequences, contains provisions which effectively strip Ontario conservation authorities of certain permitting powers, redirecting them to the Ministry of Natural Resources and other public bodies.

The lawsuit alleges Ontario’s provincial government, under the leadership of Progressive Conservative Premier Doug Ford, violated the s. 7 (life, liberty and security of the person) and s. 15 (equal protection) Charter rights of the plaintiffs and future generations when it cancelled Ontario’s cap and trade program and adopted a new, less-ambitious climate plan as compared with the previous government’s.

As part of the settlement, the fund will “ensure that investment managers take active steps to consider, measure and manage financial risks posed by climate change and other relevant ESG risks…[and disclose] to members...those risks, as well as the systems, policies and procedures...to address those risks.” The fund will also commit to achieving a net zero carbon footprint by 2050.

On September 18th, New Jersey’s Democratic Governor Phil Murphy signed a “first-of-its-kind” environmental justice law that establishes permitting requirements for facilities looking to operate in the state’s “overburdened communities”. The law seeks to protect low-income and minority communities from disproportionate exposure to environmental harm.

The case La Rose et. al. v. Her Majesty the Queen was filed last October by several young Canadian plaintiffs, with support from Oregon-based non-profit law firm Our Children’s Trust. The lawsuit alleges the Canadian government violated the plaintiffs’ rights under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms by failing to take meaningful action to prevent anthropogenic climate change.