The UA Little Rock Law Review and the Arkansas Bar Association present the 2018 Altheimer Symposium, “The Law and Unnatural Disasters: Legal Adaptations to Climate Change.”
The United States has experienced hundreds of weather disasters with damage over $1 billion since 1980, and the number of billion-dollar-plus weather related disasters has risen from an average of two per year in the 1980s to an annual average of 10.6 for the 2012 to 2016 period. In 2017 alone, the cost of weather and climate disasters is now estimated at $308 billion. And although these figures capture much of the direct economic costs of disasters, they fail to reflect indirect and non-economic costs like loss of life, displacement, and community disruption. The market has not spawned robust adaptation; development subsidized by federal insurance continues in vulnerable areas. Nor does any coherent body of law exist in the United States at either the federal or state level that is aimed at reducing vulnerability to climate change.
This perfect storm of market and law failure presents a timely opportunity for scholars and practitioners to contribute to the discourse on climate change adaptation lawmaking in the United States.
Some of the most prominent scholars in environmental law will be presenting on the challenges of legal adaptation to climate change. Topics include:
- The Science of Climate Change | Dr. Al Armendariz, The Sierra Club
- Heat Waves: Legal Adaptations to the Most Lethal Climate Disaster (So Far) | Michael Gerrard, Columbia University
- Government and the Governance of Wildfire in the Wildland-Urban Interface | Stephen, Miller, University of Idaho
- Consenting to Disaster: Policy-making and Climate Change Denial in the Southern United States | Blake Hudson, University of Houston
- The Hurricane Katrina Levee Breach Litigation: Lessons for Making Policy in a Time of Climate Change
The symposium will be held on Feb. 16 in the Friday Courtroom at the UA Little Rock William H. Bowen School of Law. Registration has been reduced to $50 for all attendees. More information and registration links can be found here.
The program has been submitted to the AR CLE Education Board for 5.25 General CLE Credits.
Permanently endowed by the Ben J. Altheimer Foundation, the Ben J. Altheimer Symposium is an annual event at which the UALR Law Review and the UALR William H. Bowen School of Law invite prominent scholars and speakers to the law school to explore topics of interest to the legal and scholarly community. Selected symposium presenters also contribute scholarly articles to a special publication of the UALR Law Review that is devoted to the symposium topic.
Ben J. Altheimer, a successful attorney and devoted friend to higher education, was born in Pine Bluff in 1878. He practiced law in Pine Bluff and moved to Chicago in 1910, where he established one of the most prestigious law firms in the city. He frequently returned to Arkansas to visit and involve himself in the farming operation near Altheimer. The town was named for his father and uncle, who donated land to the railroad for a depot.
