Congress
Guest Blogger Gregory Dotson: Is Scott Pruitt Calling for an Amendment to the Clean Air Act?
EPA Administrator Resorts to Misleading Rhetoric in Possible Prelude to Revisiting Massachusetts v. EPA
Since he was confirmed to lead the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency six months ago, Administrator Scott Pruitt has relied on three points when discussing the issue of climate change. He has cast doubt on the science by claiming it’s difficult to know the human role “with precision.” He has questioned the ability of the agency …
CONTINUE READINGCRA Update: What’s Been Overturned, What’s Still Standing?
Congress and Trump have done some major harm with this tool, but so far, not as much as feared.
We’re getting close to the deadline for Congress final chance to use its override authority under the Congressional Review Act to eliminate Obama Administrations regulations. The deadline for introducing new resolutions has already passed, and the deadline for voting ends around May 10. It’s not clear whether the Senate in particular will have time for …
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CONTINUE READINGIs the Endangered Species Act a success?
Why the number of listed species that are no longer endangered is not a good measure of the Act’s success
The Republican-controlled Senate Environment and Public Works Committee held hearings a couple of weeks ago on “reforming” the Endangered Species Act. (Coverage here and here, second link behind a paywall.) An important theme of the hearing was arguments by Republican Senators that the ESA has failed because only a small fraction of species listed for …
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CONTINUE READINGPope Francis Goes to Washington
What he said and didn’t say
Pope Francis arrived in Washington, D.C. on Tuesday to begin a much anticipated trip to the United States. While here, the pope will visit DC, New York City, and Philadelphia. Pope Francis, a former chemist, has gained much attention for his calls for action on climate change, in addition to his focus on inequality and …
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CONTINUE READINGTSCA Reform: That’s A Good Thing, Right?
Reform of the federal chemicals statute, the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), is in the news again. It got me wondering, are we are better off with the devil we know? In a legislative era characterized by harsh partisanship and excruciating deadlocks, there are signs that TSCA reform could be a rare example of cooperation …
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CONTINUE READINGPolitical systems and environmental law
The other day I posted about Australia’s repeal of its carbon tax. Australia is not the only country that is going through some retrenchment in environmental law. In Canada, the government made some substantial alterations to the requirements for environmental review for government projects (reducing the scope of the requirement and limiting it to certain …
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CONTINUE READINGThe 2014 Midterm Elections and the EPA Greenhouse Gas Rule
Why Republicans probably won’t be able to eliminate the EPA rules before 2016
I wrote earlier about why the 2016 Presidential election will be the election that matters (politically) for the long-term success of the new greenhouse gas rules proposed by EPA. (The status of legal challenges is a different question.) I want to elaborate a little more now about why the 2014 midterm elections are pretty much …
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CONTINUE READINGA Bailout By Any Other Name…
Weak environmental laws are another form of bailouts for private industry
Bailouts – the payment of public funds or resources to rescue or support a private enterprise – are politically very unpopular. The primary challenger who defeated Republican House Majority Leader Eric Cantor in Virginia excoriated Cantor for supporting big banks in the wake of the financial crisis. The bailout of banks after the crisis that …
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CONTINUE READINGObamacare’s lessons for the future of EPA’s CO2 rule
The survival of the greenhouse gas rule depends on how much people invest based on it
There has (rightly) been a lot of attention paid to the EPA proposed rule controlling greenhouse gas emissions from powerplants pursuant to Clean Air Act Section 111(d). All of that analysis – how effective the rule will be; how it will be implemented; the prospects for successful legal challenges to the rule – is important. …
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CONTINUE READINGIt’s Not Waste, It’s An Ecosystem
Letting rivers flow supports ecosystems and people
One thing that droughts in the West provoke are political battles over water. The drought that California is currently in is no exception. Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives have just passed a bill that would – more or less – exempt farmers in the Central Valley from environmental laws like the Endangered Species …
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