BUSINESS WIRE --Stephen Humes and Wylie Donald, partners at the law firm McCarter & English, announced the launch of ClimateLawyers.com, a blog devoted to the legal, public policy, and business risk questions presented by climate change and renewable energy initiatives.

"For years, the lawyers in our Climate Change and Renewable Energy Practice Group have been drawing on their varied experiences in the areas of environmental law, energy regulation, business litigation, public strategy, real property, construction law and insurance coverage law in order to get ahead of climate change issues," said Mr. Humes, who is based in McCarter's Hartford office. "Through ClimateLawyers.com, we will be able to share our findings more broadly and, hopefully, bring others into a useful dialog."

"Increasingly, states, public interest groups and others are turning to the courts as an alternative strategy to encourage federal responses to climate change, with mixed results," notes Mr. Donald, based in McCarter's Wilmington office. "We plan to keep an eye on these suits on ClimateLawyers.com, and we hope others will participate on the site with their views and observations."

"Now that the U.S. Senate is debating important federal legislation this week that attempts to mitigate climate change through the development of a nationwide cap-and-trade system, timing is particularly important to launch the blog and engage various stakeholders in this conversation," added Humes.

Mr. Donald draws on substantial environmental experience, prior non-legal technical work, and deep involvement in risk management to assist clients in understanding and controlling the coming regulatory and non-regulatory impacts of climate change. He has authored climate change articles and made leading presentations to clients and industry. One example is his article, Climate Change and the D&O Pollution Exclusion, 41 Tort Trial & Ins. L.J. 1033 (Summer 2006), one of the first to extrapolate climate change legal impacts outside of the regulatory area. Another, which he co-authored with Craig Davis, Carbon Dioxide: Harmless, Ubiquitous and Certainly Not a Pollutant Under a Liability Policy's Absolute Pollution Exclusion, is pending for publication in the Seton Hall Law Review and demonstrates his commitment to outstanding legal scholarship on the climate change issues.

Mr. Humes, who with Wylie Donald co-chairs McCarter's Climate Change group, has also played a leading role in understanding the issues of climate change law and business risk, and has been focusing his substantial energy, utilities and environmental experience in helping clients to understand the regulatory compliance issues. He also has written and spoken extensively on climate change issues, especially through his leadership role with the American Bar Association. In his latest collaboration, he is co-chairing a leading national conference on climate change presented in June, 2008 by the American Bar Association's Standing Committee on Environmental Law, entitled: Global Warming II: How the Law Can Best Address Climate Change.

McCarter & English, established more than 160 years ago, represents Fortune 500 and middle-market companies in their national, regional and local litigation and on important transactions. Its 400 attorneys are based in offices in Boston, Hartford, New York, Newark, Philadelphia, Stamford and Wilmington.