Pace Paw Print

Media Credit: Samantha Egan Cahill, "most distinguished Alumni" helped the School celebrate the 30 year anniversary of its environmental law program.

Media Credit: Samantha Egan

Students, faculty, and distinguished guests gathered on Oct. 19 to listen to whom the Dean of Pace Law referred to as one of the School's "most distinguished alumni."

Former Chief of Staff under George Pataki, John Cahill was the featured speaker at Pace's Eighth Annual Gilbert and Sarah Kerlin Lecture on Environmental Law.

The lecture was established in order to "expand the School's programs of research, education, professional, and scholarly activity and publications in environmental law," according to the event's program.

The lecture, this year, came at the time when Pace Law began to celebrate the 30 year anniversary of their Environmental Law program, which has consistently ranked number three in the nation.

At the beginning of the event, Michelle Simon, Dean of Pace Law School, who replaced Freidman, presented Cahill with an award to "thank you for this speech today and to honor you for all of your accomplishments."

Nicholas Robinson, The Gilbert and Sarah Kerlin Distinguished Professor of Environmental Law at Pace, gave the introductory remarks for Cahill, describing him as someone who "has accomplished a lot for all of us."

Although Cahill now works on energy, environmental and corporate matters as a counsel member for Chadbourne & Parke LLP, his speech focused on his time in Albany, while working for Pataki. He described many of the environmental policies he helped to create as a part of how the state government "used market forces to go ahead and drive market technologies."

Some examples of environmental polices he worked on were Executive Order 111, which according to Cahill "sent the message that the state was going to take a very active control in efficiency in agencies and businesses."

The five year plan for the MTA is another example. Cahill helped to make polices that forced the buses in NYC to trade in their old, heavy toxin emitting buses for newer, more efficient models that emit less pollution.

Cahill also addressed the climate change issue, something which he has worked to improve throughout his career.

Several Pace Law faculty seem to share Cahill's concern on this issue, including Richardson who told the Journal News in an article published on Oct. 19 that "climate change is the biggest threat to our society all around the world today…Even if we shut off every emission today, the scientific evidence shows that we would continue to have climate change for the next 40 years."

In his speech, Cahill said that he helped motivate the Governor to take state action, since at the time he felt they were "not going to see action on a federal level."

Cahill said Pataki got seven other northeastern states to participate in a regional greenhouse gas initiative which would result in a ten percent decrease in emissions by 2020. Cahill said that although this action doesn't seem particularly aggressive now, it was the first initiative taken to address climate change.

However, Cahill said he now has more confidence in the federal government to pass national environmental legislation. He stressed the need for the federal government to take small, but continuous steps toward the climate issue, rather than big pieces of legislation occasionally, "so that the private sector has confidence in their investments (concerning climate change)."

The lecture ended with a question and answer session from the audience, who questioned Cahill on other environmental law issues, such as green building requirements, which would hold companies to guidelines in order to run their business more environmentally friendly, and the importance of federal legislation.

Cahill mentioned that throughout his career, he has had disagreements with Pace on certain environmental issues.

"But they are healthy disagreements," he said.

He stressed the need for "many voices from Pace, not only about climate changes."

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