Region: National

Deciphering the SAFE Rule

When the agencies say x, they mean y

I’m one of many environmental lawyers this morning poring over the just-released final rule rolling back federal fuel economy and climate emission standards for cars.  I’m finding it helpful to create a key, of sorts, to the Orwellian language I’m encountering.  Here you go!  Happy reading, everyone.   What it says   What it means …

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The Epstein Affair

A prominent law prof got COVID-19 numbers disastrously wrong.  Then things got worse.

The New Yorker recently published a devastating interview with law professor Richard Epstein. He had attracted their notice by publishing two columns on the Hoover Institution website, the first projecting a total of 500 U.S. deaths from the coronavirus (later raised to 5000), and the second defending his work.  I don’t see any need to …

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Polticial Bias Versus Scientific Integrity: An Empirical Test

What the effort to pack the EPA’s Scientific Advisory Board can teach us.

Many people distrust environmental science, though for different reasons.  Progressives may discount science that they see as supporting business interests.  Meanwhile, conservatives may think scientists come to “politically correct” conclusions in order to get grants. It’s reasonable to think that these things may sometimes happen.  But how strong are these effects? Unwittingly, the Trump Administration …

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Transit-Oriented Development Shouldn’t Be A Coronavirus Casualty

California still needs more housing close to transit.

In recent weeks, California has emerged as one center of the COVID-19 pandemic, but it continues to face challenges that existed long before the disease reached the state.  Two serious ones: how California will meet its ever more stringent greenhouse gas emission reduction targets, and how the state will manage to provide affordable housing for …

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Still Not SAFE

The Trump administration moves ahead with plans to roll back Obama-era fuel economy standards.

After months of delay, the Trump administration has reportedly chosen this coming week—in the middle of a nationwide crisis due to the COVID-19 pandemic—to finally release the second part of its two-part rollback of Obama-era automotive fuel economy standards.  This isn’t the only environmental rollback action the administration is planning to take during the coming …

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The Environmental Pollution Agency Prioritizes Environmental Rollbacks While Dropping Environmental Enforcement

New Policy Allows Companies to Use Covid-19 As an Excuse to Pollute

The covid-19 epidemic is providing the Environmental Protection Agency with the perfect opportunity to demonstrate its priorities:  full speed ahead with environmental roll backs, including greenhouse gas/fuel economy standards for cars, cutting back on the regulation of mercury from power plants, loosening regulations on coal ash from coal plants and more.  Employees at EPA have …

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While You Were Sleeping: Coronavirus Apparently Won’t Stop Trump Environmental Rollbacks

EPA May Roll Back Car Standards Next Week

The New York Times is reporting that, despite the corona crisis and the shelter in place orders affecting people around the country, Andrew Wheeler is pressuring his EPA staff  to release a finalized rule rolling back  greenhouse gas emissions/fuel economy standards for cars.  These EPA staff are for the most part working from home with …

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Federalism and the Pandemic

For statutory, practical, and constitutional reasons, states are on the front line.

The states have been out in front in dealing with the coronavirus. Apart from Trump’s tardy response to the crisis, there are reasons for this, involving limits on Trump’s authority, practicalities, and constitutional rulings. Statutory limits. As I discussed in a previous post, the President’s power to deal with an epidemic is mostly derived from …

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Are Pandemics An Argument Against Cities?

COVID-19 spread shows governance matters more than density

With the COVID-19 virus shutting down cities and countries all over the world, anti-urban advocates are seizing the moment to argue that pandemics prove urban density is bad. For example, longtime sprawl booster Joel Kotkin argues that shelter-in-place orders and fear of contagion will push people to demand more lower-density homes, far from crowded and …

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Court Rejects Trump Administration’s Cap-and-Trade Lawsuit Against California

Federal Government’s Constitutional Challenge to California’s Linked GHG Reduction Plan Fails

Since President Trump took office in early 2017, the State of California has filed over 70 different lawsuits challenging the Trump Administration’s policy initiatives on multiple fronts, including the environment, immigration policy and health care.  Over 40 of California’s lawsuits have targeted the Administration’s efforts to roll back longstanding federal environmental protection, natural resource management …

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