As we look back at my most read blog posts in 2020, at a time when most of us have accepted that we will never go back to exactly the way things were, we are no doubt collectively ready for a new year, and I am incredibly excited about the prospects for environmental law. I am supremely confident that our longtime business philosophy of “environmental risk as an opportunity” is right for the times.

In 2021 this blog will continue providing strategic intelligence on environmental law, including critical insights into sustainability and green building for the business community, .. not just for lawyers. Blog posts generally mirror our law practice including changing and developing with client’s businesses to take advantage of the very best of the broader environmental industrial complex. Despite that many of us would be happy to forget the entire year that was 2020, I recall George Santayana’s warning, “[t]hose who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

With that admonishment, as we look for what will be the cutting edge environmental issues of 2021 here are my Top 10 most read blog posts from 2020, which compilation provides a pretty eclectic mix of the environmental matters of the day as self-selected for reading by readers of the blog, and it is no surprise the top two posts were SARS-CoV-2 related. In descending order these are the posts that had the most traffic:

COVID-19 Liability for Building Owners

COVID–19 in Buildings is all about Ventilation

HREC in a Phase l is Not a Recognized Environmental Condition

Selling a House with Solar Panels is Fraught with Peril

I Just Read my 1000th Phase I Environmental Site Assessment this Year

2018 IgCC Poised to be Adopted for the First Time

Maryland is First State to Legislate Permitted Use of PFAS

179D Tax Deduction Allocated from Government Buildings

New Lead (Pb) in Soil Standard Now Effective

Bird Friendly Building now the Law in Howard County

We do a lot of environmental transactions for public companies, the real estate industry, and more. The environment is a profit center for many of our clients and has been so, even in this year impacted by the pandemic. And while the luster has been off green building in the U.S. this year, that many businesses have changed more in recent months than they evolved in the preceding years, will make us all better, creating new profit centers, in what is always an emergent body of law.

With the impending political changes in our country, not to mention the benefits from widespread vaccination, we know 2021 will be a year with even more and expanded prospects for our clients to benefit from “environmental risk as an opportunity.”

There is no doubt that 2021 and beyond portends to be a period of both great economic prosperity and burgeoning environmental protection. I look forward to providing you with our law firm’s distinctive environmental edge in the coming years.

Wishing you a happy and better 2021!