EPA
Why 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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CONTINUE READINGEPA sends GHG NSPS rules to OMB
On Tuesday, Nov. 4, EPA sent its proposed GHG rule for power plants to the Office of Management and Budget. Not a widely reported story, perhaps because the internet was too busy misquoting EPA Administrator Jackson, who was speaking at Berkeley Law at the time. Or perhaps because we do not actually get the proposed …
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CONTINUE READINGLisa Jackson at Berkeley Law
Yesterday, Berkeley Law’s Center for Law, Energy, and the Environment hosted a public presentation by EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson. She delivered brief prepared remarks, then took a lot of questions. She didn’t announce any new policy initiatives, but she did make it clear that she (and the President) are not going to cave to pressure …
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CONTINUE READINGTwo tales of environmental ignorance
Citizens in Tokyo have discovered patches of radiation that are comparable to some of the evacuated areas near Chernobyl, radiation that presumably came from the recent nuclear power plant accident. The EPA has recently reported that the number of waterways in California that exceed water quality standards are 170 percent higher today than in 2006. …
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