This morning, the Environmental Protection Agency and Department of Transportation formally announced — as expected — that the Trump Administration is revoking California’s waiver to set its own vehicle standards. Yesterday, Trump tweeted the news, coupling it with falsehoods claiming that the rollback would save lives and save consumers money. As I blogged yesterday, both […]
President Trump just sent out a series of tweets announcing and defending his decision to revoke California’s permission to issue its own tough standards to reduce carbon pollution and require manufacturers to sell Zero Emission Vehicles in the state. Julia has a great analysis of why the decision is terrible policy and bad law that […]
This post was originally published on the American Constitution Society’s Expert Forum on September 18, 2019. President Trump announced the revocation on Twitter this morning. It’s not news that the Trump administration has been planning, via its so-called SAFE Rule, to freeze Obama-era fuel economy standards, roll back tailpipe greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions standards, and […]
Today in the Trump spite wars against California and the four auto manufacturers, we learn that the threat to revoke California’s waiver was only the first salvo from the administration. As I blogged last night, the Administration is considering revoking California’s federal waiver to issue pollution standards for cars without simultaneously rolling back tough auto […]
Some years ago, Tom McGarity coined the phrase “regulatory ossification” to describe the increasingly slow and cumbersome regulatory system. Since then, the situation has only gotten worse. As a recent article by Bethany Davis Noll and Richard Revesz points out, significant regulations take an average of four years to issue, and judicial review adds another […]
Under executive orders dating back to Reagan, regulatory agencies like EPA are supposed to follow cost-benefit analysis in making decisions. Under the Trump Administration, however, cost-benefit analysis has barely even served as window-dressing for its deregulatory actions. It has launched a series of efforts to prevent full counting of regulatory benefits, as well as committing […]
A couple of weeks ago, the New York Times reported that in the midst of growing “disarray” around the rollback of the Obama-era fuel economy and greenhouse gas tailpipe emissions standards, “Mr. Trump went so far as to propose scrapping his own rollback plan and keeping the Obama regulations, while still revoking California’s legal authority […]
Public opinion has been moving toward greater acceptance of the realities of climate change and the need for action. According to an April report by the Pew Charitable Trust, over half of Americans think the environment should be a priority for the next President, and over forty percent say that for climate change. Both figures […]
Dan and Ken have offered quick takes on why the latest Trump assault on the environment is inexplicable — as they note, the oil industry doesn’t need or want a rollback of rules that regulate methane emissions, and the compliance costs to industry are tiny. So what is the point of gutting a rule to […]
The Washington Post reported this morning that EPA is getting ready to roll back yet another Obama Administration climate regulation — this time, one regulating natural gas leaks. I wanted to add a brief postscript to Ken Alex’s post on this. What struck me most immediately was the sheer economic weirdness of making this rollback […]
