In the News

The American public enjoys tremendous economic benefits from environmental protections. Given this track record of responsible regulation, EPA deserves to have its power to be safeguarded, not stripped away.

Recently, certain members of the U.S. House and Senate have engaged in attempts to hijack measures like the small business reauthorization bill and the appropriations negotiations by attaching amendments and riders that gut EPA’s authority to control greenhouse gas emission. Polluters with distaste for the small rise in the cost of doing business associated with emissions controls have fought alongside certain politicians willing to skew or outright ignore scientific fact, to undermine EPA’s power to move forward with rules requiring emissions reductions.

“If it’s still on the books, there’s probably a reason for it,” says Michael Livermore, executive director of the Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University’s School of Law. He does allow that “there are a ton of regulations that could be made more efficient, where we could achieve the same goal at lower costs.”

“This is about elections. It’s about politics. It’s about using this issue as a metaphor to gain points in partisan politics,” said Michael Livermore, the executive director of the Institute for Policy Integrity, a non-partisan advocacy organization that focuses on governmental decision making, and an adjunct professor at New York University School of Law.

If the new analysis of the acid rain programs are any indication, there isn’t necessarily a tension between efficiency and fairness, said Michael Livermore, a law professor at New York University and executive director of the school’s Institute for Policy Integrity. That is promising for market-based efforts, but it is not a guarantee that future cap-and-trade systems will turn out the same way, he said.

“We don’t need to trust in our luck,” Livermore said. “We can design our programs to reduce the risk of hotspots.”

Thirty years ago, President Reagan put cost-benefit analysis at the heart of how agencies like the EPA and OSHA do business and initiated one of the most important recent developments in how the federal government works. In a 1981 executive order, Reagan instructed the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA), which is part of the White House Office of Management and Budget, to oversee all major agency regulations to make sure they met a cost-benefit standard. This move was heavily fought by protection oriented groups, like environmentalists, because they saw it as a backdoor for favoring industry at the expense of the public.

Michael Livermore, executive director of the Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University, told BNA March 21 that the CURB Act offers nothing new and would only prolong the rulemaking process.
“Right now, there are very strong analytical requirements that agencies have to go through before they adopt regulations,” Livermore said. “There are rules set up by courts under the Administrative Procedure Act and cost-benefit analysis rules that the president has in place. These requirements are comprehensive. They are designed so that agencies look at all the costs, all the benefits, and so that they only adopt rules that maximize net benefits. So [the CURB Act’s requirements] are redundant requirements that will just create more red tape for agencies. Supposedly this is about reducing red tape.”

In a recent House Energy and Commerce Committee climate hearing, Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) jokingly asked if some of his fellow colleagues were going to overturn the law of gravity, “sending us floating about the room.” It seems funny until you realize that it’s in response to a disturbing trend in Congress of misusing, manipulating, or ignoring scientific facts and academic research. As Lisa Jackson, the head of the EPA, put it, if they keep it up, “[p]oliticians overruling scientists on a scientific question would become part of this committee’s legacy.

Shortly, the EPA will release proposed rules that reduce toxic emissions, including mercury, from the utility sector. The new controls are likely to continue a long precedent of cost-benefit justified regulations under the Clean Air Act. In fact, a recent retrospective study of the effects of EPA programs implemented after 1990 show tremendous economic benefits (an estimated $2 trillion) versus costs that add up to a fraction of that.

Worst of all are the environmental costs. As the NYU Institute for Policy Integrity reports in “Flooding the Market,” “The financial costs of the NFIP are considerable, but they are likely dwarfed by the ecological damages that the program encourages. Floodplains are located near waterways and in coastal zones. These areas tend to be both ecologically significant and sensitive, and they contribute substantial ecosystem services.”

Michael Livermore, a law professor at New York University and a close observer of the regulatory process, said their involvement suggests the White House is keeping tabs on a proposal with broad impacts — both costs for utilities and health benefits for the public.

“These are not the kinds of folks who spend their time on run-of-the-mill permit applications,” said Livermore, who is executive director of NYU’s Institute for Policy Integrity.