In the News

Consider this a plan that allows the nation to set aside money in advance to pay for these disasters, instead of putting the burden on taxpayers. To cover those costs now, Congress allocates disaster relief money, or the federal government absorbs the cost some other way. For example, Katrina caused the National Flood Insurance Program to rack up $19 billion in debt. The program borrowed the money from the U.S. Treasury and has no plan to pay it back, according to the Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University Law School.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski’s EPA resolution, set for a 6 hour Senate showdown today, is really about the legitimacy of climate science, not the appropriate role for EPA in controlling greenhouse gases. The Senator argues that she wants the legislative branch to deal with the climate change issue instead of a federal agency. But the text of her one-sentence resolution disapproves of EPA’s scientific finding that greenhouse gases endanger public health and welfare.

This afternoon, the EPA is said to be sending its economic analysis of the climate bill proposed by Kerry and Lieberman to the Senators’ offices. It’s a scoring of how the legislation would affect the American economy. Hopefully that analysis will include the benefits, not just the costs of the measure. The agency has not incorporated benefits into its past economic analysis of climate legislation. Usually it looks exclusively at the price tag, giving legislators nervously poised to vote on the controversial proposal a clear view of the downsides but none of the upshots.

In an April report titled “Flooding the Market,” the Institute for Policy Integrity concludes that the insured are getting a discount from federal taxpayers. Not only that, but the National Flood Insurance Program’s below-market rates combined with huge payouts in recent years has created a $19 billion debt. The Institute’s communications director notes that the debt is racking up $730 million in interest each year.

“For years we have been looking at only one side of the coin — the negative effects of regulating carbon emissions,” writes Michael A. Livermore, executive director of the Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University School of Law. His institute put together a report looking at the benefits of carbon-reduction strategies – something that estimates of cost from the Environmental Protection Agency and the Congressional Budget Office don’t take into account:

Environmentalists have long-held that the program amounts today to a subsidized destruction of America’s floodplains for the benefit of beachfront vacationers and wealthy homeowners (Rosie O’Donnell, Matt Damon, I’m looking at you). A recent report by New York University’s Institute for Policy Integrity backs up these arguments.

Nearly 260 lives could be saved if boilers in big buildings burned cleaner oil, a new study says. “Switching to a less toxic fuel is relatively inexpensive compared to the serious health consequences of burning dirty oil,” said Michael Livermore of New York University’s Institute for Policy Integrity.

Scott Holladay, an economist who researched coal ash disposal for the New York-based nonprofit the Institute for Policy Integrity (IPI), said the debate over whether to classify ash as hazardous or not will get the lion’s share of attention, but the language governing beneficial use could be the most important.

“How we define beneficial use will be the meat of this,” Holladay said. “There is room to gut the regulations from within.”

With thousands of barrels of crude still pouring into the sea after BP’s disastrous oil spill April 20, the downsides of offshore oil drilling have become all too clear.

That doesn’t mean that we should never extract the natural resources under our oceans. But it does mean we should wait until we can extract the highest possible price at the lowest costs to make sure Americans are being compensated for the enormous risks we take on when we allow drilling.

The choice of whether or not to drill is not a one-time decision; if we decide not to drill today, that does not mean we can’t drill in the future. Only the choice to drill is irreversible—once we use up a non-renewable resource, that’s it. The reserves of oil and gas offshore can be thought of as an option, one that has considerable value that we need to take into account.