Think Tanks on the Auction Block
I've previously expressed some skeptical views about the so-called think tanks that play such a significant role in Beltrway policy debates. (See this post) The New Republic has an interesting story about the increasing dependence of think tanks on big money Here is the crux: Nowadays if donors don’t like the results they get, they are increasingly inclined to move their money to more compliant think tanks, or to more expressly political operations. “Think tanks ar...
CONTINUE READINGGina McCarthy, climate policy, and states
Blogs and news outlets are widely reporting today that President Obama is very close to nominating Gina McCarthy to be the new EPA administrator, replacing Lisa Jackson (WaPo post here). Since 2009, McCarthy has been the head of EPA's division handling air pollution, a division that's taken tremendous fire in recent years for issuing rules to limit climate emissions under the Clean Air Act. She knows the politics and pitfalls of making federal climate policy lik...
CONTINUE READINGThe future of climate politics (Pt. 2)
In my last post, I noted a recent report that called for a new political path for environmentalists and others seeking to enact carbon policy in the United States, one that focused on developing policy proposals that would help mobilize a grassroots movement to support limits on greenhouse gases. My question was, is there anything that we could do to help make the political landscape friendlier to such a grassroots movement, and therefore lower the bar to enacting legi...
CONTINUE READINGEnvironmentalists Sue Over New Lake Tahoe Plan: Is the Perfect the Enemy of the Good?
The Sierra Club and a local neighborhood group recently sued the bistate Tahoe Regional Planning Agency, challenging TRPA's just-adopted Regional Plan for the Lake Tahoe Basin. That development strikes me as unfortunate and counterproductive. Let me briefly explain why. The Lake Tahoe Basin, which straddles the California-Nevada border, has since 1968 been governed under a bistate Compact negotiated between the two states and ratified by Congress. The key player un...
CONTINUE READINGThe future of climate politics (Pt. 1)
I’m a little late to the game here, but I’ve finally had a chance to read Harvard Prof. Skocpol’s post mortem of why she thinks cap-and-trade legislation failed in the U.S. Congress in 2009-10, and what she thinks the best way forward in the future is. (Dan blogged about this already here and here; Matt Kahn here.) For those of you who haven’t read the 140-page pdf (available here), I encourage you to do so. It’s well written and a good overview of the his...
CONTINUE READINGConfessions of a Regulatory Czar
The official title of the White House's regulatory czar is deceptively abstruse, the Director of the the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) within the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). But OIRA plays a crucial role in government policy by reviewing all major proposed regulations. Environmentalists have long decried OIRA as a place where good regulations go to die. Defenders of OIRA have made two key arguments. One is based on OIRA's formal mi...
CONTINUE READINGDworkin Does Dallas
The death of Ronald Dworkin last week was not merely an event for legal philosophers, but really for anyone concerning with the law, for Dworkin might have been the pre-eminent legal theorist of the last century. The legacy of his ideas is too broad and deep for a blog post, but his notion of law-as-integrity has always seemed to me particularly vital for anyone concerned with legal development. Cass Sunstein sums it up nicely: Dworkin introduced an arresting metap...
CONTINUE READINGStill More About the Keystone XL Pipeline
I am opposed to the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline. Nonetheless, I find myself somewhat in disagreement with my blogging neighbor Jonathan Zasloff on this one, and somewhat in agreement with Joe Nocera. Yes, as Nocera argues, as long as there is demand for oil, energy producers will keep looking for new supplies to exploit. But there is a tragic flaw underlying the assertion that we might as well take the tar sands oil because, if we don’t, somewhat else wil...
CONTINUE READINGHow Not to Write About Keystone XL
I've always liked the work of New York Times columnist Joe Nocera, ever since his days as an investigative reporter for the Texas Monthly. He doesn't come to a topic with an axe to grind, and tries to see through the cant. But I think he just got snookered. In Nocera's recent column on the Keystone XL project, entitled "How Not to Fix Climate Change," he attacks the likes of Bill McKibben, Michael Brune and James Hansen for their opposition to the project. Here...
CONTINUE READINGOMB’s Dubious Claim to Regulatory Expertise
The head of OIRA – the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs at OMB– is often called the White House’s regulation czar. OIRA is charged with reviewing the cost-benefit analysis of all major government regulations. This task is all about economics. Yet OIRA has never established the kind of reputation for economics expertise held by other governmental bodies like the Council of Economic Advisors, the Treasury Department, the Federal Reserve banks, or the ...
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