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Guest Blogger Ben Levitan: The Tenth Anniversary of Massachusetts v. EPA
The opinion stands for EPA’s responsibility to address climate change based on law and science, and to safeguard public health and the environment under adverse political conditions
If it feels like we’re being inundated with bad news about federal climate policy, here’s a cause for hope: this month marks the tenth anniversary of the Supreme Court’s decision in Massachusetts v. EPA, one of the most important environmental cases in our nation’s history. The Supreme Court’s landmark decision in Massachusetts came when the …
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CONTINUE READINGThe Overlooked Part of Trump’s Executive Order on Climate Change
It Revoked a Market-Based Approach to Natural Resource Management
President Trump’s March 28th Executive Order on Promoting Energy Independence and Economic Growth has understandably received a great deal of attention from the environmental community. Commentators, including those on Legal Planet, have examined the order’s efforts to roll back the climate change initiatives of the Obama administration. Another aspect of the order, though, has been …
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CONTINUE READINGCourt of Appeal Confirms California Cap-and-Trade is Not a Tax
It’s voluntary and it provides valuable commodities to purchasers
With the feds backsliding (or worse) on climate regulation, the efforts of California and other states to tackle climate change are especially prominent and critical. So it’s a welcome time for today’s good news for California climate regulators: The state court of appeal has rejected industry’s challenge to California’s cap-and-trade program. That program is one …
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CONTINUE READINGTrump’s Executive Order: Bad Policy and More Uncertainty
President Trump’s Executive Order on climate policy is an invitation to bad policymaking and legal uncertainty. The big-ticket item targeted by the Order, of course, is the Obama Administration’s Clean Power Plan and related rules on carbon dioxide emissions from power plants. The EO has limited immediate legal impact: none of the major rules can …
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CONTINUE READINGSome Resources for Non-Experts (and for Experts Too!) on the Executive Order Rolling Back Federal Climate Change Regulations
Cutting Through the Information Overload
The President’s Executive Order rolling back climate change-related initiatives, “Promoting Energy Independence and Economic Growth,” just came out today, and there’s already plenty of analysis to help people to understand its likely impact. While the short answer is that it is terrible for our country, the long answers tend to make people’s eyes glaze over if …
CONTINUE READINGA Motley Crew
Trump has placed about a dozen people in EPA. They’re already causing problems.
ProPublica has a list of Trump appointees to agencies. They can be aptly described as a motley crew. The most significant is probably Senior White House Advisor Donald Benton, a former Washington State senator and Trump’s regional campaign manager. Once ran a county environmental office. According to the Seattle Times, “he has an almost perfect …
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CONTINUE READINGClimate Change is the new He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named
And Scott Pruitt is the new High Inquisitor at EPA
Last week, after saying that he did not believe that carbon dioxide is the primary cause of climate change, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt reminded me for the second time since he took office of someone I met at age fifteen: Dolores Umbridge. Yes, that Dolores Umbridge, the one that functions as the main villain of the …
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CONTINUE READINGThe Trump Administration’s False Stories About the Environmental Protection Agency Are Meant to Take the Agency Down
Donald Trump and Scott Pruitt Distort the Facts About EPA’s Mission, History, and Success
The Trump Administration has made clear its plans to systematically dismantle the Environmental Protection Agency. Destroying the EPA will be a key element of the administration’s fight, in the words of White House policy advisor Steve Bannon, to achieve the “deconstruction of the administrative state.” [Update 8/22/17: Bannon is out, but that doesn’t change the Administration’s …
CONTINUE READINGPruitt Shows His True Colors
Still skeptical of climate science, EPA’s regulatory authority, and the Paris Agreement.
Pruitt made conciliatory noises when he arrived at EPA. I suspect the honeymoon is over. On Thursday, he was asked on CNBC whether CO2 is the main cause of climate change. His answer? ““I think that measuring with precision human activity on the climate is something very challenging to do and there’s tremendous disagreement about …
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CONTINUE READINGThe Car Industry’s Rollback Effort — Disappointing But Not Surprising
The struggle to force the car industry to cut pollution goes back six decades.
The car industry is appealing for President Trump’s help against stricter carbon standards for cars. The industry’s action is disappointing for those who believed industry claims to embrace sustainability and technological innovation. There’s no good excuse for the industry’s about-face on a regulation it had originally agreed to. As one of the architects of the …
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