State environmental laws such as the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) have historically focused on the conservation and preservation of environmental conditions. This paradigm prioritizes issues such as pollution, land management, and resource sustainability. However, most jurisdictions which have sought to address climate change have expanded their clean energy production capacity through new physical infrastructure. Since this expansion consumes land and water resources and creates other environmental side-effects, it often produces conflicts between historical environmental conservation and preservation mandates and the urgent imperative to expand carbon-free energy generating capacity in order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs). California has in the past created exemptions from certain review requirements in CEQA for socially beneficial projects and streamlined the review process for renewable energy generating facilities. This work proposes that California go further and create exemptions from CEQA review requirements for Utility-Scale Renewable Energy Projects (USREPs) in order to prevent vexatious litigation and promote renewable energy development. These exemptions should be modeled on the exemptions created for certain environmentally friendly housing and transit projects and should ensure that sufficient classical environmental safety criteria are still satisfied. While this work focuses specifically on California, its suggestions for regulatory reform are generally applicable to all states with an interest in developing thriving renewable energy sectors and mitigating the effects of climate change.

In the face of climate change, extractivism, discrimination against Indigenous peoples, and cultural appropriation, Indigenous knowledge and cultural heritage are under threat. This Note explores the status of Indigenous Peoples; rights to use their ceremonial plants by looking at the legal inequities that prevent Indigenous peoples from exercising their cultural practices and traditional ceremonies. Indigenous communities reside on territories where 80% of the world’s biodiversity is found. Indigenous peoples’ cultural and spiritual practices, traditional knowledge, and livelihoods depend on healthy biodiverse systems. This is one of many reasons why Indigenous land defenders risk their lives protecting their territories. Several factors pose challenges for Indigenous peoples seeking to protect and preserve their cultural practices, including their ceremonial plants like peyote, psilocybin, and ayahuasca. Indigenous knowledge keepers must be at the forefront of discussions involving their cultural practices and medicinal plants. Currently, United States domestic law is failing to protect Indigenous peoples’ spiritual and cultural practices even though it has stated it supports the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, recognizing Indigenous Peoples’ rights to cultural heritage and traditional knowledge. This article argues that the U.S. should implement international principles that recognize Indigenous peoples’ rights to ancestral cultural practices under the western notion of religious rights.