In the News

The outcome of Georgia’s runoff election will determine the degree to which President-Elect Joe Biden may be able to count on the Senate’s support in enacting his energy platform, which aims for a carbon-free electricity sector by 2035. Bethany Davis Noll and Richard Revesz, regulatory experts whose work focuses on the legal tools available to presidents to pursue their agendas, take a look at the options available to Biden to pursue his energy agenda with, or without, help from the Senate.

The deregulatory era of the past four years, in some cases, exposed how vulnerabilities in the way those rules were crafted or finalized can be used to weaken or rewrite them. About 85 percent of the Trump administration’s deregulatory actions over the past four years were struck down by the courts. Richard Revesz, the Lawrence King Professor of Law and Dean Emeritus at New York University School of Law, where he directs the Institute for Policy Integrity, points out that regulatory action tends to be more durable if it’s undertaken in the first term of a two-term administration—all the more reason why Biden must take swift action in his first year in office to put the nation on an even more aggressive path for climate action.

Donald Trump is using the dying embers of his US presidency to hastily push through a procession of environmental protection rollbacks. The actions of the exiting administration will have “extremely damaging environmental consequences”, said Richard Revesz, a professor of environmental law at New York University. “Trump’s counterproductive actions have allowed the climate crisis to intensify and put the health of many Americans, especially in the most vulnerable communities, at risk by ignoring threats from pollution,” he added.

The Biden administration will likely crack down on environmental policy after the Trump administration rolled back protections. The new EPA administrator will impose much stricter standards. The preliminary list of those rumored to be considered for Biden’s EPA includes Richard Revesz, a New York University law professor and one of the nation’s leading experts on environmental law. He also served as the NYU law school dean from 2002-2013.

FERC claims carbon pricing would improve the “efficiency” of wholesale markets but does not explain how. Fortunately, in March 2020, the left-leaning Institute for Policy Integrity (IPI) published a 60-page report that clearly articulates the rationale underpinning the Commission’s proposal.

Trump began or completed the process of rolling back 125 environmental rules and regulations, according to an analysis by the Washington Post. Most of those initiatives came under legal attack. The Trump administration lost 82 of 100 legal decisions related to rule making on energy, the environment and natural resources, calculates the Institute for Policy Integrity of New York University's law school. Often these adverse rulings were based on the lack of a suitable administrative record to support the rules — the result of laziness or incompetence at the agency level.

Richard Revesz, a New York University law professor and founder of the school’s Institute for Policy Integrity, is another contender to be EPA administrator under the incoming Biden administration, according to recent press reports. Revesz tells Inside EPA: “Addressing climate change and pollution inequities, and ensuring strong environmental protection for all Americans must be at the forefront of the public policy agenda after years of alarming neglect. I want to help address these critical imperatives, whether within or outside the government.”

In 2008, Michael Livermore and Richard Revesz wrote Retaking Rationality, a book arguing that cost-benefit analysis of regulations should be recognized not as an anti-regulatory weapon, but rather a nonideological tool for promoting good government. Now they return with a new book, Reviving Rationality, which analyzes developments since 2008, and proposes further reforms for cost-benefit analysis going forward. They discuss it with the C. Boyden Gray Center for the Administrative State’s Executive Director, Adam White.

Host Kristin Hayes talks with Michael Livermore and Richard Revesz, cofounders of the Institute for Policy Integrity at the New York University School of Law and coauthors of the new book, Reviving Rationality: Saving Cost-Benefit Analysis for the Sake of the Environment and Our Health. Looking forward, Livermore and Revesz contend that a Biden administration should review federal guidelines for conducting cost-benefit analysis and update the process based on the best available science.

EPA’s Science Advisory Board is moving closer to supporting the agency’s revised guidelines on counting the costs and benefits of rules with a draft review of the plan that includes caveats on the “discount” rate and other issues. Jason Schwartz, legal director of the Institute for Policy Integrity at the New York University School of Law, said the 7 percent discount rate is unwarranted, and the SAB panel should reject it.