EPA
EPA Unveils Carbon Standard for New Power Plants
This morning, U.S. EPA released its anticipated rule limiting carbon dioxide emissions from new power plants. The proposed Carbon Pollution Standard for New Power Plants under Section 111 of the Clean Air Act purports to set national limits on the amount of carbon pollution new power plants can emit. Today we’re taking a common-sense step …
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CONTINUE READINGOne reason for anti-EPA riders
There’s been a lot of (appropriate) outrage over the efforts in the past year and a half by House Republicans to gut environmental protections through the use of appropriations riders. Those efforts might well continue in the next appropriations cycle, especially since bashing the EPA is apparently a popular election-year activity for Republicans. One of …
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CONTINUE READINGU.S. Supreme Court Justices Are on USEPA’s Case
You can’t blame the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency of late for feeling it’s under siege. All of the current Republican presidential candidates are regularly excoriating EPA on the campaign trail, and Congress has conducted oversight hearings and threatened all sorts of legislative action designed to clip EPA’s regulatory wings. Now the U.S. Supreme Court appears …
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CONTINUE READINGWhy Critics Should Stop Bashing EPA (And What They Should Talk About Instead)
Bashing EPA is apparently a good political tactic, at least if you’re in a red state, but it’s also a smokescreen — what is presented as an attack on the agency is actually an attack on the mission assigned by Congress. In terms of carrying out the mission, EPA is no different than the Defense …
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CONTINUE READINGEPA’s Achievements
You’re going to be hearing a lot from certain quarters about EPA and what a terrible agency it is. Despite shortcomings in the statutes, repeated assaults on its budgets, and political harassment, the agency’s accomplishments have been quite remarkable. As this chart shows, the volume of air pollutants has gone done very substantially in the …
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CONTINUE READINGWhat’s in the final 2012 spending bill?
I’ve just finished plowing through H.R. 2055, the2012 Consolidated Appropriations Act, which was signed by President Obama last week. I was curious to see how many anti-environmental riders made it into the final bill. I haven’t seen much news coverage of the details of the final bill, and the White House offered no comment when …
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CONTINUE READINGWhy we have the EPA
Air quality in Beijing over the past week has reached horrifically bad levels. The U.S. Embassy’s air quality tracker went from “Hazardous” to “Beyond Index” on Dec. 4. Check out the depressing details via Treehugger and France 24. It looks like the Great Smog of London from 1952. England passed its Clan Air Act 4 …
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CONTINUE READINGIs EPA regulation of carbon dioxide anti-democratic?
There’s been a lot of noise from House Republicans (and others) about how EPA regulation of carbon dioxide under the Clean Air Act is somehow an end-run around Congress or anti-democratic. But it is neither.
CONTINUE READINGThe “21st Century Contract with America”
I’ve just been reading Gingrich’s new version of the Contract with America. It repeats Gingrich’s desire to end most federal regulations in favor of federal coaching and subsidies for businesses and state governments: We must also replace the EPA, which pursues an anti-jobs agenda the economy simply cannot sustain. A pro-growth Environmental Solutions Agency in …
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CONTINUE READINGNo (or at least little) net loss of jobs from regulation
We keep hearing the phrase “job-killing regulations” from the Republican side of the aisle, with environmental regulations generally at the top of their lists. Yet there has never been much evidence for the claim that government regulation is systematically bad for employment or the economy. To the contrary, scholars, this blog, think tanks (notably the …
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