Planning Law and Environmental Limits - A New Legal Architecture for Emissions

This book explores the role of planning law in balancing the dilemma of resource extraction with the recognition of emission limits.
Naomi Luhde-Thompson explores how planning law, which is one of the strongest forms of environmental regulation in the UK, has failed to incorporate environmental limits into decisions. Environmental limits are broadly understood as the point at which an irreversible change occurs in a system, providing a measure by which to assess development and to test whether or not these limits might be overrun. Combining theoretical perspectives with experiential practice, the book draws upon hydrocarbon extraction to analyse and interrogate the functionality of current decision-making processes related to planning law and climate change. It goes on to propose a new system that expands the foundational value of public interest in planning law, recommending strategies to incorporate environmental limits, in both strategic planning and decisions.
Planning Law and Environmental Limits will be of use to lawyers and policymakers, as well as to researchers, academics and students interested in climate change, planning and environmental law.

List of contents

Foreword
List of Abbreviations
1. Death by a thousand cuts: climate mitigation in planning law
The limits of authority: how competence shapes outcomes for fossil fuel extraction and climate change
Mitigation's paradox: how competing priorities create counterproductive climate action
4. Recognising limits through procedural and substantive environmental rights
5. Divided content: the emergence of asymmetries in environmental decision-making

About the author

Naomi Luhde-Thompson is a Senior Lecturer in Sustainable Futures at Oxford Brookes University's School of the Built Environment, UK.

Product details

• Authors: Naomi Luhde-Thompson
• Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd.
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Release: 27.02.2026
• EAN: 9781041047254
• ISBN: 978-1-0-4104725-4
• No. of pages: 210
• Series: Routledge Explorations in Environmental Studies
• Subjects: Social sciences, law, business > Business > Economics; NATURE / Natural Resources, SCIENCE / Global Warming & Climate Change, Nature / Environmental Conservation & Protection, Climate Change, BUSINESS & ECONOMICS / Environmental Economics, LAW / Environmental, ARCHITECTURE / Urban & Land Use Planning, LAW / Land Use, Environmental Economics, Environmental law, Environmental Management, Environmental policy & protocols, Environment law, Environmental policy and protocols