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46 Colum. J. Envtl. L. 225 (2020-2021)
Anthropocene Accountability Litigation: Confronting Common Enemies to Promote a Just Transition

handle is hein.journals/cjel46 and id is 224 raw text is: Anthropocene Accountability Litigation: Confronting Common Enemies to Promote a Just Transition Randall S. Abate* This article offers a new perspective in the quest for climate justice. Myriad accountability lawsuits in the U.S. have been filed against the fossil fuel and industrial animal agriculture industries in the past few years, but these efforts have proceeded without coordination between the environmental and animal law fields. There has been no scholarly inquiry that unites the efforts to seek relief from common enemies for exacerbating the climate change crisis while profiting from their operations. The article first reviews the climate change impacts from the fossil fuel and industrial animal agriculture industries and examines how federal regulatory gaps and subsidies enable and exacerbate the climate change impacts from these industries. It then reviews legal theories in common law accountability litigation against these industries that seek damages for the harms these industries cause to public health and welfare, the environment, and animals. The article proposes that accountability litigation against the fossil fuel and industrial animal agriculture industries can facilitate a transition away from reliance on fossil fuels and factory farms to more sustainable alternatives. Positive outcomes from several related contexts including tobacco litigation, the phaseout of harmful substances in environmental regulation, and the COVID-19 crisis support the urgent need for this just transition. * Rechnitz Family and Urban Coast Institute Endowed Chair in Marine and Environmental Law and Policy; Director, Institute for Global Understanding; and Professor, Department of Political Science and Sociology; Monmouth University. This article was supported by a Monmouth University summer 2020 faculty fellowship award. The author gratefully acknowledges valuable input from Chris Wlach, Itzchak Kornfeld, Jeff Ray, and colleagues at the Vermont Law School Colloquium on Environmental Law Scholarship on September 25, 2020. Nadine Nadow provided valuable research assistance and Kathleen Telfer, Senior Articles Editor of the Columbia Journal of Environmental Law, provided exceptional editorial review. 225

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