Regulatory Policy

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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Cutting Through the Smog

New research highlights the importance of reducing ozone pollution and suggests ways to do it.

As a change of pace, here’s a post that’s not about Trump, Pruitt, or their friends in Congress.  Two recent papers highlight the importance of EPA’s tightening of the air quality standard for ozone and suggest some ways of doing so that could be more acceptable to industry. (We’re talking about ground-level smog here, not …

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Should the Feds Leave Regulation to the States?

The more we’ve learned about environmental problems, the less they seem purely local.

Voices in and out of the Trump Administration have called for a shift responsibility for environmental protection to the states. Given that none of them has ever shown enthusiasm for state environmental protection, it’s possible whether their rule concern is federalism or deregulation. (In fact, as NYU’s Ricky Revesz points out, Pruitt has generally opposed …

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Trump’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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A House Divided

The climate change executive order shows the signs of the bitter divisions within the White House.

Actually, there are two divided houses. One is the House of Representatives. The other is the White House. The divisions in the House of Representatives were on display in the abortive effort to pass a health care bill.  Similar fissures in the White House are just below the surface of yesterday’s executive order on climate …

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Some 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 …

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If Trump Guts Key Programs, Does Staying in Paris Even Matter?

Administration to Issue Executive Order to Pull the Clean Power Plan

(This post is cross-listed at takecareblog.com) Today the Trump Administration is expected – via Executive Order – to announce that it will begin the process to rescind the Clean Power Plan.  The Order apparently says nothing about whether the U.S. will remain in the Paris Agreement.  For months, speculation about whether the U.S. will withdraw …

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Scott Gottlieb and the FDA

The FDA nominee compares favorably with some of Trump’s choices. But there are still problems.

There was a time when it might not have seemed particularly noteworthy that a presidential nominee was competent and sane. But we do not live in those times. So it is actually worth taking notice of the fact that Scott Gottlieb, Trump’s nominee to head FDA, is competent and sane. And unlike some other Trump …

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Trump’s EPA Budget in Perspective

An new analysis highlights how harmful the cuts would be.

The Environmental Protection Network, a coalition of former EPA professionals, has issued a detailed analysis of Trump’s proposed EPA budget.  We knew the proposal was bad, but the new analysis shows just how damaging the proposed cuts would be on many different dimensions.  Here are a few key takeaways. First EPA’s budget is already lean.  Adjusting …

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The Future Of Energy In 2030

Register now for the California State Bar Environmental Law Conference in Los Angeles on April 12th

How we generate, distribute and use electricity is key to meeting California’s environmental and greenhouse gas reduction goals. We need to be much more efficient with the electricity we use, while ensuring that it comes from greenhouse gas-free sources, like solar, wind, and geothermal, coupled with energy storage technologies. We also will need to electrify …

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