This article explores the intersections of daily life and environmental law in modern China. With comparative perspectives on analogous challenges in the United States, it reports on these critical domestic challenges for China at a pivotal moment in its reemergence as a dominant world power.

This article tells the epic tale of the fall and rise of Mono Lake— the strange and beautiful Dead Sea of California—which fostered some of the most important environmental law developments of the last century.

In the United States, debate over the responsibilities of different levels of government are framed within our system of constitutional federalism, which divides sovereign power between the central federal administration and regional states. Dilemmas about devolution have been erupting in all regulatory contexts, but environmental governance remains uniquely prone to federalism discord because it inevitably confronts the core question with which federalism grapples—“who gets to decide?”— in contexts where state and federal claims to power are simultaneously at their strongest.