Regulatory Policy
The Environmental Pollution Agency Prioritizes Environmental Rollbacks While Dropping Environmental Enforcement
New Policy Allows Companies to Use Covid-19 As an Excuse to Pollute
The covid-19 epidemic is providing the Environmental Protection Agency with the perfect opportunity to demonstrate its priorities: full speed ahead with environmental roll backs, including greenhouse gas/fuel economy standards for cars, cutting back on the regulation of mercury from power plants, loosening regulations on coal ash from coal plants and more. Employees at EPA have …
CONTINUE READINGCourt Rejects Trump Administration’s Cap-and-Trade Lawsuit Against California
Federal Government’s Constitutional Challenge to California’s Linked GHG Reduction Plan Fails
Since President Trump took office in early 2017, the State of California has filed over 70 different lawsuits challenging the Trump Administration’s policy initiatives on multiple fronts, including the environment, immigration policy and health care. Over 40 of California’s lawsuits have targeted the Administration’s efforts to roll back longstanding federal environmental protection, natural resource management …
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CONTINUE READINGThe Flight From Evidence-Based Regulation
This Administration specializes in arguments for ignoring the evidence.
The Trump Administration’s major deregulatory efforts share a common theme. They assiduously avoid having to rely on scientific or economic evidence. Confronting that evidence is time-consuming and difficult, particularly when it often comes out the other way. Instead, the Administration has come up with clever strategies to shut out the evidence. The effort to repeal …
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CONTINUE READINGReducing Coronavirus Fatalities: A Cost-Benefit Analysis
Q: From an economic perspective, what’s it worth spending to curb the pandemic? A: A lot.
At an extremely rough estimate, it would be worth spending about $4 trillion to cut the coronavirus death rate in half.
CONTINUE READINGThe Right Wing’s Views of Coronavirus and Climate Change
There’s a common theme: “nothing to worry about, folks.”
It’s interesting to see what conservative think tanks are saying about the coronavirus and compare it with their views on climate change. There are some common themes — both problems tend to get downplayed, along with any possible need for major government action. Like Trump himself, the conservative think tanks seem unable to process scientific …
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CONTINUE READINGAn Easy, No-Fuss, Climate Fix for that Big First Day in Office
No, not rejoining the Paris Agreement, though that’s a good idea too. Something else.
This is kind of like one of those recipe things you see: putting a gourmet meal on the table in five minutes. But it’s more like: the one ingredient that will make all your recipes come out better. More seriously, what I’m about to propose is very conventional, easily integrated into agency procedures, and a …
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CONTINUE READINGUnderstanding wastewater utility views on innovation and regulation
by Luke Sherman, Alida Cantor, Anita Milman, and Michael Kiparsky
The same underlying technology has been used in the municipal wastewater sector for 100 years. New technologies that treat effluent more efficiently and effectively exist, yet deployment of those technologies has been slow. The limited adoption of new technologies in the wastewater sector raises questions about how to encourage innovation. Popular narratives around innovation sometimes …
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CONTINUE READINGRisk, Uncertainty, and COVID-19
What do we actually know at this point about the dangers?
Like many environmental hazards such as toxic chemicals, the coronavirus is fundamentally a problem in risk management. And like issues such as climate change, the problem involves scientific data, modeling, and a good deal of uncertainty. With climate change, the key parameter is climate sensitivity. For diseases the key parameter is called R0, which measures …
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CONTINUE READINGVirus Denial
Yet another effort to ignore reality, from the usual players.
We’ve seen this movie before. Scientists warn of a serious threat. But in Trump World, the problem doesn’t exist. It’s just a product of alarmism. First, climate change. Now, the coronavirus, COVID-19. Trump himself has worked hard to minimize the problem. “We have very few people with it,” he said, and ” people are getting …
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CONTINUE READINGAnother Problem with Cost-Benefit Analysis of Climate Policy
It’s hard to estimate benefits. But it turns out costs are also uncertain.
It’s common knowledge— at least, among people who follow these things — that it is hard to estimate the benefits of a proposed climate policy. But it’s actually quite difficult to estimate the costs as well. There are three major problems in estimating the benefits of a proposed climate policy. First, it’s hard to estimate …
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