In the News

There is a much stronger economic case for curtailing highly toxic air pollution from old and outdated industrial boilers than there is for allowing the emissions to continue.

Over the last two weeks in Cancún, some Latin American countries have shown openness to exploring private funding sources and market mechanisms to address climate change, while a small number of others have staked an ideological opposition to market-based climate solutions with little interest in compromise.

Phasing out dirty oil over a 20 year period would generate $5.3 million worth of health benefits and avoid 600 mortalities, according to a study from the New York University School of Law’s Institute for Policy Integrity. The DEP received roughly 2,200 311 complaints about buildings’ chimney smoke in Fiscal Year 2009 and issued 500 violations. Boilers using the heavy No. 6 or No. 4 are more difficult to maintain than No. 2 oil or natural gas, causing problems with incomplete combustion, officials said.

The United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled in April that the FCC did not have legal authority to stop Comcast, the nation’s largest cable provider, from blocking its customers’ access to a file-sharing service called BitTorrent. The decision limited the FCC’s power over web traffic under the current law and gave the ability for Internet service companies to block or slow specific sites. For example, they could decide to charge video sites like YouTube to deliver their content faster to users. “That’s the worst case scenario,” said Scott Holladay, an economics fellow at the Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University. “The likelihood of that happening is very small.”

Michael Livermore, a law professor at New York University and a leading proponent of cost-benefit analysis in environmental regulation, said estimating the value of mercury reductions would help inform the public about the new rules. But because EPA isn’t allowed to consider costs when it sets the toxic pollution standards, he said, “it doesn’t make sense for the agency to pull its hair out estimating the benefits of a rule that’s already cost-benefit justified” by the particulate matter reductions.

Outside the auspices of COP16, a number of developing countries like India and Chile are starting to consider using market mechanisms like carbon caps to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. That climate action is taking place at all is good news at a conference that doesn’t appear to be headed towards a breakthrough. In the time remaining in Cancun, negotiations should try to deal with these budding programs.

While the climate change negotiations in Cancun are unlikely to result in a global cap on greenhouse gas emissions, forward motion is possible in many key areas. Among them, forest preservation is the brightest spot for progress in what has now become a very dreary policy forecast.

Clouds of pessimism hang over Cancun, largely due to the absence of a domestic climate law in the United States. Certainly, it makes it more difficult for the developed world to ask the developing countries, like India or China, to move towards binding carbon reductions. But success is possible on smaller-bore issues that that require immediate attention, are relatively easier to address, and will have a major impact.

A recent review of state regulatory review procedures by the Institute for Policy Integrity noted that “Florida’s entire regulatory review process needs to focus more on maximizing social benefits, not just on minimizing compliance costs.”

That’s why a new report from New York University’s Institute for Policy Integrity couldn’t arrive at a better time. The report analyzes and compares regulatory review systems in all 50 states, and even gives them grades. Not surprisingly, no state earned an “A.” The average grade, however, was a miserable “D+,” which was the grade conferred on New York’s supposedly top-of-the-heap review system.