Region: National
National Monuments Under Trump
Does the Antiquities Act give the President the authority to revoke national monument designations?
Debate on the Antiquities Act continues in the early months of the Trump Administration. Opponents of Obama’s recently-proclaimed Bears Ears National Monument (see earlier post) have pushed for Trump to revoke or significantly alter the designation, fueling debate as to whether a president has the authority under the Antiquities Act to do so. By way …
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CONTINUE READINGThe Implementation Gap
What lawmakers expect isn’t necessarily what happens — sometimes for better, often for worse.
The public drama revolves around efforts to make and unmake environmental regulations. But as we all know, what statutes and rules say isn’t necessarily what happens on the ground. Often, the result is that environmental goals are frustrated. Deadlines are missed, standards are ignored or fudged, or enforcement efforts misfire. The result is incomplete implementation, …
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CONTINUE READINGCutting Through the Smog
New research highlights the importance of reducing ozone pollution and suggests ways to do it.
As a change of pace, here’s a post that’s not about Trump, Pruitt, or their friends in Congress. Two recent papers highlight the importance of EPA’s tightening of the air quality standard for ozone and suggest some ways of doing so that could be more acceptable to industry. (We’re talking about ground-level smog here, not …
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CONTINUE READINGShould the Feds Leave Regulation to the States?
The more we’ve learned about environmental problems, the less they seem purely local.
Voices in and out of the Trump Administration have called for a shift responsibility for environmental protection to the states. Given that none of them has ever shown enthusiasm for state environmental protection, it’s possible whether their rule concern is federalism or deregulation. (In fact, as NYU’s Ricky Revesz points out, Pruitt has generally opposed …
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CONTINUE READINGTrump’s Executive Order: Bad Policy and More Uncertainty
President Trump’s Executive Order on climate policy is an invitation to bad policymaking and legal uncertainty. The big-ticket item targeted by the Order, of course, is the Obama Administration’s Clean Power Plan and related rules on carbon dioxide emissions from power plants. The EO has limited immediate legal impact: none of the major rules can …
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CONTINUE READINGA House Divided
The climate change executive order shows the signs of the bitter divisions within the White House.
Actually, there are two divided houses. One is the House of Representatives. The other is the White House. The divisions in the House of Representatives were on display in the abortive effort to pass a health care bill. Similar fissures in the White House are just below the surface of yesterday’s executive order on climate …
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CONTINUE READINGTrump’s Frontal Assault on Climate Policy
The true victims aren’t you and me. It’s our descendants who will pay the price, long after Trump is gone.
We live in a time of contrasts. Yesterday, scientists reported more evidence that climate change will intensify heat waves and droughts in temperate zones through changes in the jet stream. Today, however, the Trump Administration initiated the process of eliminating federal climate policies. In a pointed insult to EPA staff who have worked long and …
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CONTINUE READINGIf Trump Guts Key Programs, Does Staying in Paris Even Matter?
Administration to Issue Executive Order to Pull the Clean Power Plan
(This post is cross-listed at takecareblog.com) Today the Trump Administration is expected – via Executive Order – to announce that it will begin the process to rescind the Clean Power Plan. The Order apparently says nothing about whether the U.S. will remain in the Paris Agreement. For months, speculation about whether the U.S. will withdraw …
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CONTINUE READINGScott Gottlieb and the FDA
The FDA nominee compares favorably with some of Trump’s choices. But there are still problems.
There was a time when it might not have seemed particularly noteworthy that a presidential nominee was competent and sane. But we do not live in those times. So it is actually worth taking notice of the fact that Scott Gottlieb, Trump’s nominee to head FDA, is competent and sane. And unlike some other Trump …
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CONTINUE READINGTrump’s EPA Budget in Perspective
An new analysis highlights how harmful the cuts would be.
The Environmental Protection Network, a coalition of former EPA professionals, has issued a detailed analysis of Trump’s proposed EPA budget. We knew the proposal was bad, but the new analysis shows just how damaging the proposed cuts would be on many different dimensions. Here are a few key takeaways. First EPA’s budget is already lean. Adjusting …
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