A Study Of The U.S. Climate Change Legal Systems

Climate change has brought about the greatest challenge to the natural ecology of earth and human society in the history of mankind.In the face of climate change issues,the legal community is actively seeking effective institutional responses.The United State's norms and positions on climate change issues have important direct and indirect effects on the global climate change landscape and response,and have a high and unique impact in the international framework for climate change as a global issue.The United States,which leads the world's environmental law,has carried out more than 30 years of climate change normative processes at the federal and local levels,and has gradually formed a unique legal system for dealing with climate change,which is manifested in multiple levels and multi-faceted risks.The prior to impact risk assessment and management legal system,the operational command-and-control and market based legal systems,and the after-the-fact judicial participate system.The incorporation and convergence between the systems have combined to form an effective legal system.At present,China's research on climate change in the United States focuses on macro-systems,or focuses on subtle parts.The literature on systematically combining its institutional system and exploring the underlying causes from a holistic perspective is rare and reveals that the US climate change response is not enough.The entire combined set of systems is more comprehensive than typically represented.Therefore,this paper aims to dialogue economic analysis law with a scientific climate change system,and to bridge the gap between law and science,social rationality and scientific rationality.What is the overall picture of the U.S.climate change legal system?What is its law and characteristics?What are the experiences and lessons in dealing with climate change?What can be learned for the improvement of China's climate change legal system?This is the core issue of this article.This paper takes the U.S.federal and local climate change response as the research path,takes the mitigation and adaptation strategy as the main axis,and comprehensively,systematically,and deeply analyzes the climate change legal system in the United States,summarizes the causes,laws and characteristics of the U.S.climate change legal system,and refines China's climate change laws.The system and future directions provide reflection and reference.The research in this paper is divided into six parts.The introduction elaborates the research background,research status,research significance,research methods and ideas of the U.S.climate change legal system.The first chapter studies the legal connotation and legislative background of climate change in the United States.First,we will discuss the concept of greenhouse gases controlled by the U.S.climate change legal system,and analyze the core issue of climate change governance and greenhouse gas regulations.Further study of the characteristics of climate change highlights the urgent need for governance requiring legal intervention,and how the law can construct an effective governance model to institutionalize and standardize governance.The U.S.climate change legal system is derived from the background of climate change that has a serious impact on the natural ecology and people's lives in the United States.The evolution of the U.S.climate change policy and the legislative process show that the issue of climate change has shifted from scientific research to economic development.Further development has shifted towards a focus on state actor influence.The second chapter studies the four legal system models of risk assessment and management legal system,command-and-control,market based legal systems,and judicial supervision of climate change in the United States.In the risk assessment and management legal system,the United States mainly focuses on the catastrophe insurance system and the liability insurance system.Through the design of the system,it decentralizes and coordinates the climate risk,and provides effective financial security,provides risk dispersion and management,and inhibits the risk of climate change.The paper analyzes the U.S.federal greenhouse gas emission reporting system,environmental impact assessment system,air pollution permit system,motor vehicle emission management system,energy efficiency standards,and labeling system,and analyzes the top-down traditional command and control system relying on environmental supervision.This includes the way intervention plays an important role in the regulatory decision to control greenhouse gas emissions in the United States.The market-oriented control system of climate change law that combines economic principles and market mechanisms is the current mainstream control tool in the United States.It guides greenhouse gas emission agencies to actively cooperate with management based on economic incentives to achieve greenhouse gas control purposes in a cost and benefit-maximizing manner.Judicial litigation is an important feature of climate change governance in the United States.U.S.climate change litigation far exceeds climate litigation in any other jurisdiction in the world.The court has become the platform for communication and coordination and dispute resolution of the multi-climate change participants in the United States.The judiciary plays an important role in monitoring,communicating,interpreting,and re-engineering legal norms and shaping social influence functions in climate change issues.The third chapter studies the local climate change response practices in the United States.Local governments have been advocates of climate change at the federal level for long periods of lack of meaningful action and strong leadership in climate change governance.This chapter examines the climate response practices of local governments such as the U.S.Climate Change Initiative,Washington State,California,and Massachusetts,and interprets the important content of climate change governance in the United States.The local government initiated administrative actions and legislation to mitigate and adapt climate change.This "bottom-up" Climate Change efforts promote the development of the U.S.climate change legal system.The practice of local climate change legal system as a "test field" for the federal climate change response has filled the gap in the lack of federal climate change regulations and provided reference experience for future national climate change response.The fourth chapter analyzes the laws and characteristics of the U.S.climate change legal system.Facing climate change,a global issue with collective action characteristics,maintaining and safeguarding U.S.national interests is the primary consideration of the United States.In the implementation of the climate change legal system,the United States pays attention to cost-effective factors,upholds the climate control concept of capital market and limited government,and weighs the relationship between sustainable development and interest-based climate change response.The two flexible legal principles of mitigation,adaptation and judicial review,which meet the climate change governance needs,constitute an important normative element in U.S.climate change governance.By examining the U.S.'s climate change practices at the same level,we can see that the U.S.domestic climate change response has always been unsettled,and the establishment of a "four-in-one" climate by command and control systems,market-oriented systems,risk control systems,and judicial litigation systems.Changing the regulatory system has become the normative legal framework for the United States to address climate change.The fifth chapter analyzes the feasibility and constraints of the U.S.experience,and enlightens the improvement of China's climate change legal system.From the perspective of American constitutional system and state structure,the constitutional system of political separation,party differentiation and the "American supremacy" values are the fundamental factors affecting the formation and implementation of its climate change legal system.The separation of the federal system of rights and the differentiation of the climate policy concepts of the Republican Party and the Democratic Party have led to structural and procedural imbalances in the governance of the U.S.climate change legal system.However,the U.S.climate change legal system has undergone decades of development and evolution,forming a certain normative pattern.On the basis of fully considering the legal approach,China can learn from the climate change governance local "first-in-first-trial",climate change legal system decision-making considerations Social Cost of Carbon(SCC),market-oriented control system normative experience,and promote climate change justice and other aspects of the U.S.climate change law.Some experiences of the system are useful references for improving China's climate change legal system.This paper has three major innovations in the systematic analysis and research of the U.S.climate change legal system.The first is the systematic review of the cross-disciplinary analysis.Climate change is a new topic of environmental law.It involves multiple disciplines and needs to develop the functions of the original environmental law system or form a new system to solve it.The United States has formed a relatively systematic,standardized,and effective legal framework on climate change issues.Based on the latest U.S.climate change laws and the first-hand rich materials spanning the national structure and the normative mechanism,this article interprets the latest laws and regulations,reviews the latest climate policies,analyzes the latest climate litigation,combined with the U.S.climate change legal system.Structural design and specific practical experience,examine the relationship between legal system and climate change,and analyze the United States to build a "four in one" with traditional command and control supervision system,market-oriented control system,risk control coordination system,and judicial litigation supervision system,forming the current climate change legal supervision system.The second is the practical value of the design of China's climate change legal system.At present,China's research on the legal system of climate change is still at the basic stage,and the applicability and operability of the legal norms have limitations.However,most of the research on the climate change legal system in the United States has been scattered,limited to the introduction of policies or the basic level of a single mechanism,and has not yet carried out comprehensive and systematic research.This thesis deeply studies the complete system structure of the U.S.climate change legal system,from federal to local,from policy to law,from theory to practice,from the initial stage to the latest process,and further examines the applicability of the U.S.climate change legal system.It is suggested that China can learn from the experience of SCC,market-oriented control system normative experience,and promote climate change justice in the climate change governance local "first-in-first-trial" and climate change legal system decision-making,and promote the climate change justice and other aspects of the U.S.climate change legal system.This will allow the construction of the overall framework of the climate change legal system in China.Therefore,this paper has important practical value for the complete and systematic study of the U.S.climate change legal system.The third is innovation in research methods.The United States pays attention to the consideration of climate policy and institutional procedures from the perspective of law and economics.This paper uses law and economics as an analytical tool to systematically analyze the dynamics and rationality of the operation of the U.S.climate change legal system,and the structure and system between legal systems and economic activities.This logical relationship provides a theoretical analysis basis for the study of the U.S.climate change legal system.