James R. Nolon - Choosing to Succeed: Land Use Law & Climate Control

Praise forChoosing to Succeed: Land Use Law & Climate Control

I often have conversations with friends who are deeply concerned about climate change and who are concerned that their individual efforts (bicycling to work, flying less) arent enough, yet uncertain about how to more productively contribute. Professor Nolons book has an answer, providing a blueprint for how every person can work within their community to mitigate and adapt to climate change. The book is comprehensive yet nuanced, simultaneously accessible to those outside of the climate policy space and enlightening to those within it. Professor Nolons book gives productive, concrete advice every American willing to choose to succeed in meeting the climate change challenge.

Katrina Fischer Kuh, Distinguished Professor of Environmental Law,
Pace University Elisabeth Haub School of Law

Leave it to John Nolon, the prime mover of environmental land use law, to serve as our optimistic guide to the complex challenges that climate change, pandemics, and natural disasters pose to local officials and others on the front lines of government response. This comprehensive volume provides real-world examples of effective, responsive, 21st century zoning and planning regulations that serve as valuable guideposts for communities engaged in the struggle to craft and implement mitigation and resilience strategies.

Michael Allan Wolf, Richard E. Nelson Eminent Scholar Chair in Local Government, University of Florida Levin College of Law

Despite numerous attempts to increase state and federal involvement, land use regulation remains primarily a function of local governments. John Nolons masterful book embraces local land use authority and highlights numerous opportunities for local governments to use their authority to plan for and mitigate the consequences of climate change. In that sense, this book truly does provide local officials with knowledge needed to Choose to Succeed.

Ashira Pelman Ostrow, Peter Kalikow Distinguished Professor in Real Estate and Land Use Law and Executive Director of the Breslin Center for Real Estate Studies, Maurice A. Deane
School of Lawat Hofstra University

This is the hopeful, comprehensive, solution-oriented book that the climate crisis has long demanded. Professor Nolonthe leading U.S. voice on land use law and sustainabilityexpertly pinpoints local governments as the locus for both climate impacts and solutions, exploring local and collaborative pathways for mitigating and adapting to a rapidly changing climate.

Hannah Wiseman, Professor of Law, Professor and Wilson Faculty Fellow in the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences, and Institutes of Energy and the Environment Co-funded Faculty Member, Penn State Law School

John R. Nolon

ENVIRONMENTAL LAW INSTITUTE
Washington, D.C.

Copyright 2021 Environmental Law Institute
1730 M Street NW, Washington, DC 20036

Cover design by Natalia Arango, www.renoleum.com.

Published April 2021.

Printed in the United States of America
ISBN: 978-1-58576-229-3

John R. Nolon is Distinguished Professor of Law at the Elisabeth Haub School of Law at Pace University where he teaches property, land use, dispute resolution, and sustainable development law courses and is Counsel to the Law Schools Land Use Law Center, which he founded in 1993. He served as Adjunct Professor of land use law and policy at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies from 2001-2016.

Professor Nolon served on President Carters Council on Development Choices for the 1980s, President Clintons Council on Sustainable Development, New York Governor George Patakis Transition Team, and Governor Elliot Spitzers Transition Team. In 2009, he received the National Leadership Award for a Planning Advocate by the American Planning Association; in 2014, the International City/County Management Association presented him its Honorary Membership Award, its highest honor for a person outside the city management profession for his exemplary service to local government. The NY Planning Federation presented him its Lifetime Achievement Award in 2018. He is on the advisory boards of the Sustainable Development Code, the NY Planning Federation, and the Westchester/Fairfield chapter of the Urban Land Institute.

Professor Nolon received a Fulbright Scholarship to develop a framework law for sustainable development in Argentina where he worked from 1994 through 1996. A collection of articles produced as a result of this work appeared in a symposium edition of the Pace Environmental Law Review. He has produced five books published by the Environmental Law Institute on the topics of land use law, open space protection, local environmental law, and the mitigation of damage caused by natural disasters. A prolific writer, he published nearly 50 articles in the New York Law Journal and over 60 law review articles on various aspects of land use and sustainable development law. Professor Nolon is also co-author of the nations oldest casebook on land use law: Land Use and Sustainable Development Law: Cases and Materials, currently in its ninth edition.

Choosing to Succeed contains over 1,200 footnotes citing important sources of information that support its positions. Its chapters refer to over 80 cases that chart the trajectory of judicial decisions regarding climate change and the use of the land.

I cant count how many students contributed to this volume, but it is an important number. Dozens of Haub Law School students over the past three years wrote papers for me in classes and seminars, did small research papers on individual topics, and helped me prepare for law school workshops, symposia, and conferences. They found and briefed the 80 cases and they found, explained, and cited the 1,200 sources.

In the last year, two outstanding research assistants helped me organize all of this into eight chapters for this nearly 300-page book. I am indebted to Haley Brescia and Jessica Roberts for this partnership. Whenever I asked them to help me with a task, they said of course or sure thing and delivered soon and expertly. Their positive attitude was shared by the dozens of students who contributed to this book: they have chosen to succeed and, if their attitude is contagious enough, we will.

It is during these students time as practicing lawyers that we must mitigate the causes and adapt to the consequences of climate change. Having learned so much from creating Choosing to Succeed, they join me in hoping that this book will help its readers learn how to use the law to foster meaningful and much needed change.

John R. Nolon
Distinguished Professor
Counsel to the Land Use Law Center Elisabeth Haub School of Law
Pace University

In late August 2017, the outer bands of Hurricane Harvey were still wringing out the last of 50 inches of rain on downtown Houston whenwith up to one-third of the city still underwateran investigative piece in the The Washington Post suggested the real target of blame for the deluge that would become the most expensive storm in U.S. history. The fault lay not in our stars or the wanting response of an under-sourced FEMA. The real villain, according to the