This user-friendly book - noted for its comprehensive legal process approach to the depth and complexity of modern environmental law - gives students a solid doctrinal footing in the law and helps build their analytical skills. Environmental Law and Policy: Nature, Law, and Society, Fourth Edition, uses the legal process approach, building on a base of common law and constitutional law and continuing on to statutory and administrative law, to illustrate both the structure of the law and how it works. Among the attributes that have made this classroom-tested casebook a favorite: coverage not only of the staples of environmental law but of hot topical areas of climate change law, regulation of toxics including consumer product exposures, natural ecological services, risk assessment, "brown-fielding" of contaminated sites, and the linkage between endangered polar bears and atmospheric loading broad topical coverage is supplemented with a reference section that includes a Statutory Capsule Appendix and an annotated Glossary of Acronyms and Abbreviations extensive author-written explanations accompanied by a large number of visuals, including charts, graphs, and photographs statutory and regulatory materials that build on the common law foundation of environmental law, showing the various ways in which statutes address environmental problems and pointing out the strengths and weaknesses of each generic statutory type The Fourth Edition, which has been reorganized to bring related content together to better correspond to the amount of time usually spent on various topics, features: a new co-author, Noah D. Hall of Wayne State an array of significant materials not generally covered in other casebooks, including: The Copenhagen Climate Change Conference (the December 2009 international climate change greenhouse gas regulatory negotiations) Exxon Shipping v. Baker (oil spill punitive damages) Native Village of Kivalina v. ExxonMobil (climate change/public nuisance tort) National Assoc. of Homebuilders v. Defenders of Wildlife (endangered species and clash of statutes/ESA, CWA) Coeur Alaska v. SE Alaska Conservation Council ("When can a pristine river be a toxic disposal lagoon?" and the Supreme Court's recent parade of retreats from environmental protection) So. Utah Wilderness Alliance v. Norton (as a reflection of pressures on resources planning) Stop the Beach Renourishment v. Florida (sea-rise and oceanfront property) expanded coverage of clean water, greenhouse gas trading, carbon taxes, and more The outstanding author team of Environmental Law and Policy: Nature, Law, and Society, Fourth Edition, offers accessible, comprehensive coverage of the fundamentals of environmental law as well as today's hot topics.