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In the United States, it is a criminal felony offense for killing, even unintentionally, any one of more than 1000 species of protected birds. If a perpetrator company violates this law, officials of the company can be sent to jail for up to two years and be fined up to one-quarter million dollars per bird killed. Over the past decade, wind power has grown to be the most-installed energy source in the United States and will hold that top position going forward. Wind power in the United States now kills an estimated several hundred thousand of these birds that are protected by strict federal criminal statutes every year. As wind power's small three percent share of the energy market multiplies rapidly in the next decades, and as the United States moves to renewable energy as the keystone of its mobilization against climate change and global warming, this bird mortality number likely will increase commensurately. This Article examines several emerging legal conflicts between mitigation of global warming and criminal prosecution of sustainable energy development through three federal species protection statutes and an international treaty. Wind turbines indisputably are one of the premier technologies providing the world a chance to mitigate global climate change before there are irreversible, dire effects on the world environment, which could include bird mortality. This Article contrasts the significant change in executive branch policies between the Obama and Trump administrations, now increasing the number of felony statute bird disputes under U.S. law. Despite the significant number of bird mortalities linked to operating wind turbines, as of this publication, there is no court decision ever construing prosecution of, or criminal penalties applied to, any wind turbine operation that kills protected bird species. Some U.S. Senators have accused the executive branch of a lack of equal enforcement of the laws. Sustainable energy law now confronts criminal law in a case of legal first impression. This Article analyzes, in detail, analogous court decisions applied to other technologies creating an uneven legal foundation on which wind turbines are built. This Article analyzes conflicting case law regarding the mens rea requirement for criminal felonies in the deployment of sustainable energy development, original congressional intent construed in the courts, and recent court decisions restricting executive branch discretion in such environmental matters. It concludes by comparing the relative risk of different technologies to our environment, in the context of the current climate change response imperative and the role of courts to resolve these conflicts now of first impression.

Can international power be effectively used to control \"power\"? Electricity is deemed the second most important invention in human history and is now linked inextricably to irreversible international climate change. Power sector carbon emissions must be solved for a solution to the international problem of climate change. Many large developing countries are underwriting the biggest push in world history into high carbon-emitting coal-fíred power, which will destroy world goals. The United Nations sdentine panel in late 2014 concluded, with high certainty, that we are passing the point of being able to control increase in world temperature to less than 2 degrees Celsius—3.8 degrees Fahrenheit—the so-called \"tipping point\" of the Planet's climate. The Kyoto Protocol, the world's attempt at climate control, as it stands today is not sufficient to meet the challenge, Tightening the screws of international law is necessary. This Article examines the various comparative international, national, and subnational legal tools now addressing what many consider the most pressing world problem, with a comparison of U.S. and international tools. The issue of legal mechanisms is at a critical point — China, India, and the other large developing countries are deploying a massive build-out of coal-fíred power generation plants that alone will make world climate goals unattainable, unless different regulatory tools are immediately deployed. This Article assesses where we are going and what international law is and is not doing, and uses these lessons to chart a successful path forward to sustainability.

Of note, moving power is everything! Since humankind first created the wheel and harnessed animals to do productive labor, energy has been the means to organize production and advance civilization.7 Electricity is a unique form of energy-with no substitutes or alternatives to its use in the twenty-first century for operation of computers, the Internet, medical imaging, national defense and security, modern communication, building size, and climate control.8 Electric energy is the fundamental technology essential to power the developed American economy.9 As the Supreme Court noted, it is now \"possible for a customer in Vermont [to] purchase electricity from an environmentally friendly power producer in California or a cogeneration facility in Oklahoma. Part II examines how ROFRs operate regarding electric power and assesses the dimensions of the constitutional confrontation created by several recent state refusals of the requirements under FERC Order 1000.20 We examine copper wires and why electricity, both as an engineering phenomenon and legally, is treated differently than everything else in the known universe21- power transmission is everything.374 Restructuring and deregulating the retail electric power sector, which commenced at the state level in approximately 1997, dramatically changed the regulatory paradigm. 5 About 40% of the states restructured prior to the electric sector problems in California in 2000-2001; the other 60% of the states retained traditionally structured retail electric sectors.376 The amount of power wholesaled before it is sold at retail, has shifted from only 8% in the 1960s to over 50% today.377 As noted by the federal courts and affirmed by the Supreme Court, these independent market participants are the new competitive reality in power and energy markets378:

State carbon policies to control climate warming and our energy future are under legal attack. A successful barrage of litigation now invokes the dormant Commerce Clause and the Federal Power Act as interpreted through the Filed Rate Doctrine, as well as the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution, to challenge the legal validity and sustainability of these state carbon-based laws. California and other states have survived these legal challenges sparingly, and then often only by prevailing with procedural defenses that dismiss the case before a decision on the legal merits of their state energy regulation. This Article examines and analyzes the multiple legal dimensions of challenges on carbon control and sustainable energy in a constellation of states, comparing them to California's particular legal challenges. The Constitution is not changeable by simple legislation; its requirements and restrictions endure, and state action on energy can be ruled unconstitutional. The now-forming precedent will construct and limit the U.S. carbon-control future as states labor to achieve a legally sustainable economy. This Article navigates these recent challenges to state carbon control and sustainable energy statutory and regulatory law. How the judiciary is resolving each challenge, and the precedent created, will chart the future of U.S. sustainable energy policy.