In the News

The Institute for Policy Integrity at NYU Law School has notified the US EPA that it will file a lawsuit against the agency unless a cap on greenhouse gas from cars, boats and airplanes is enacted, under the authority of the Clean Air Act.

The move comes just as President Obama signed a bill requiring US airlines to be excluded from the EU airline emissions trading program, now on hold.

“For the kind of efficiency standards EPA has been setting, the statute only lets EPA cover new models of cars and trucks,” said Jason Schwartz, the group’s legal director. “But compared to the 10 million new cars and trucks sold every year, there are over 250 million total vehicles on the road. A cap on vehicle fuels is the best way to cover emissions from those older, less efficient models.”

Efficiency standards alone, Schwartz said, also risk generating a rebound effect. “As cars can drive further on a tank of gas, each vehicle mile travelled becomes cheaper,” he said, “and consumers respond by driving more, and so emitting more. That eats into the benefits of the efficiency standard in the first place. By comparison, a market-based mechanism like a cap builds a price of emissions into the cost of vehicle fuel, which stays the same no matter how many miles the consumer can travel on that gallon of gas. So there’s no rebound effect.”

Executive Director Michael Livermore said in an interview yesterday that requiring refineries and fuel importers to limit the carbon content of their fuels is the best way to reduce emissions from the transportation sector while limiting cost. The cap would ultimately apply to fuels for all motor vehicles and aircraft.

“So far, the EPA has been more oriented toward more traditional regulatory approaches,” Livermore said, “but ultimately, if we’re ever going to really control emissions, we have to do it through a cap or some kind of pricing mechanism.”

“Obviously it’s clear that we need to keep moving on climate change,” said Michael Livermore, director of the Institute for Policy Integrity, which is threatening the lawsuit.

“Hurricane Sandy and the discussion in the media in its aftermath raised the profile of the issue and delivered a stark reminder that climate change is not going away – the political dynamics of the US Congress not withstanding.”

The Institute for Policy Integrity, a part of New York University’s Law School, said it is acting because U.S. fuel efficiency standards are not stringent enough.

The group sent the formal petition to EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson, requesting that she “propose and adopt regulations” that would set up an emissions trading system to curb carbon
output from fuel used in vehicles and aircraft.

“These are serious numbers,” said Michael Livermore, the executive director of the Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University Law School. “We’re not talking about a few million dollars here, a little submerged land over there. We are talking about major metropolitan areas that are at risk. We’re talking about agriculture that’s at risk.”

The Institute for Policy Integrity at NYU Law School has been pushing the Environmental Protection Agency to act, in part by capping vehicle emissions. Wednesday, the group will initiate litigation against the EPA. Its goal is to establish a cap and trade system on fuel.

But Michael Livermore, executive director of the New York University Institute for Policy Integrity, told BNA Nov. 19 that even if sequestration is triggered, Jan. 2 is not likely to have drastic, immediate impacts on agencies, because most of them “have tricks up their sleeves to deal with short-term budget shortfalls,” such as shifting funds from one program area to another.

For that reason, Jan. 2 does not necessarily represent doomsday for most agencies, according to Livermore.

There is evidence to support the view that the government is actually encouraging citizens to live in areas most in danger of flood damage. According to a 2010 report issued by the Institute for Policy Integrity, Congress has historically set the premium rate too low for flood insurance — effectively subsidizing building in flood-prone areas at the expense of taxpayers at large. This practice has helped drive the fund $19 billion in debt, caused mostly by the unusually severe damage caused by Hurricane Katrina. In addition, the report argued that the environmental effects of the federal government’s flood-insurance policy may be more severe than the financial effects.

In fact, the most up-to-date figures show about 8.5 percent fewer regulations in Obama’s first 46 months than in the same time frame for Bush. That tally comes from the Office of Management and Budget.

“The story is much more of continuity than radical change,” said Michael Livermore, executive director of the Institute for Policy Integrity at the New York University School of Law.

Opinions on climate change were examined in a 2009 survey of economists who had written at least one academic paper on the subject. Out of the 144 respondents, more than 94 per cent believed that the United States should sign a global treaty committing to greenhouse gas reductions. Only 2 per cent of the respondents believe that the U.S. should not seek to reduce GHG emissions.