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  • Biden Team in a Bind Over Reversing EPA’s ‘Secret Science’ Rule

    EPA Administrator Wheeler said the Congressional Review Act can’t be used because the rule is “an internal housekeeping regulation that does not affect external people to the agency,” and because it isn’t economically significant, meaning it isn’t expected to have an annual effect on the economy of at least $100 million. But Richard Revesz cast doubt on that analysis. “Whether a rule qualifies for disapproval is up to Congress to determine,” Revesz said. “Wheeler’s views are entitled to no deference. The decision is not up to him.”

  • Conservationists Slam Lame-Duck Gut of Migratory Bird Protections

    New York University Law professor Richard Revesz said the new rule will likely be overturned by the courts, Congress or by the incoming Biden administration, but cautioned the damage in the near term is significant. “I would be very surprised if this rule is in effect in two years, but it will create burdens and difficulties in the meantime,” he said.

  • EPA Restricts How Science Can Be Used to Shape Regulations

    EPA's rule is a sharp break from its decades-old approach to new rules, which relied on certain studies to issue some of its most expansive regulations, including air quality standards for fine particle pollution. “This rule would bar regulators from considering bedrock scientific evidence about the dangers of pollution,” Richard Revesz said in a statement.

  • Reflecting on Trump’s Record and Anticipating Biden’s Performance

    Richard Revesz shares his thoughts on how the transition to a new presidential administration later this month will impact U.S. environmental and climate change policy.

  • EPA, Explain Yourself

    The Trump Administration’s commitment to deregulation has led the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to take contradictory positions across administrative proceedings during the last four years, argues New York University School of Law Professor Richard L. Revesz in a forthcoming article.

  • A Final EPA Rollback Under Trump Curbs Use of Health Studies

    The Environmental Protection Agency released one of its last major rollbacks under the Trump administration, limiting what evidence it will consider about risks of pollutants. “Ignoring these research findings will lead to uninformed and insufficiently stringent standards, causing avoidable deaths and illnesses,” Richard Revesz said in a statement.

  • Trump Administration, in Parting Gift to Industry, Reverses Bird Protections

    The Trump administration gutted protections for migratory birds on Tuesday, delivering the second of two parting gifts to the oil and gas industry. “These are definitely midnight regulations,” said Richard Revesz, an environmental law professor at New York University. “They’re 11:59 and 59 seconds regulations.”

  • Climate Inaction Could Put Utilities in Legal Peril

    Utilities that address climate risks will see benefits in their bottom lines, said Justin Gundlach, a senior attorney at the New York University School of Law's Institute for Policy Integrity. "The fundamental point here is that it would be cheaper if they just looked at this hard and made prudent investments," he said.

  • Columbia Report Details How Federal Government Can Help Get Transmission Infrastructure Needed for Grid Decarbonization Built

    The Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs has issued a paper, in partnership with the New York University School of Law's Institute for Policy Integrity, detailing how the federal government can enable the construction of the transmission infrastructure necessary to decarbonize the country’s power generation.

  • White House Clears Flurry of Regs in Last-Minute Push

    Ricky Revesz, a New York University professor whose name has been floated as a possible Biden OIRA administrator, said generally the Trump administration's regulatory aggressiveness is "unusual." "It's part of a larger story to get stuff out at the very end where the regulatory initiatives are on the whole extremely harmful," he said. Revesz pointed to a Health and Human Services Department proposal that would force all the agency's regulations to sunset within 10 years, unless a review is completed.