In the News

If climate change legislation doubles as a plan to avoid a fiscal crisis back home, there will be a new powerful constituency behind a yes vote—an unusual marriage of convenience between state budget offices and environmentalists that may be the key to getting ACES over the hump.

“The fact that he’s not a stereotype is definitely a good thing, both for public health and the environment and for businesses,” says Michael Livermore, executive director of the Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University’s School of Law. “If you fit him in the stereotype, he’s either going to be bad for business or bad for the environment, and that’s not a choice we want to have to make. He’s going to be looking to make sure we achieve our environmental public health goals in a way that gives companies maximum flexibility to achieve our social goals at the lowest possible costs.”

[A] recent study by the Institute for Policy Integrity (IPI), a non-partisan think tank based in New York City, found the benefits of upgrading disposal sites would exceed the costs of tougher regulations by almost 10 to 1. The research focused mostly on coal ash ponds like the one that failed in Kingston, Tenn., in December. The costs for quarries to upgrade would be much lower than the costs for ponds, according Scott Holladay, an economist who researched the issue for IPI.

Federal regulation of coal ash from power plants will help protect the environment and could also help electric utilities save billions of dollars, according to a study released yesterday. The New York University School of Law policy brief says requiring utilities to keep coal ash in dry, covered, synthetically lined storage areas would reduce risks of catastrophic spills, water pollution and respiratory ailments caused by airborne particles.

Real regulation of toxic ash from coal-fired power plants would not only protect the environment, but would make economic sense. That’s the conclusion of a new report issued today by New York University School of Law’s Institute for Policy Integrity.

Immediately after word came out that Sonia Sotomayor was the President’s pick for the Supreme Court, the environmental community (this author included) immediately went searching for the green angle. We found it in one decision: Riverkeeper v. EPA, which was seized upon as proof of Judge Sotomayor having a modicum of green cred. However, in a new Huffington Post piece Richard Revesz (dean of the NYU School of Law) and Michael Livermore (executive director of NYU’s Institute for Policy Integrity) think the green community might be reading too much into things.

Be careful about reading too much into Sonia Sotomayor’s environmental leanings from one cost-benefits case, warn Richard Revesz and Michael Livermore in the Huffington post: “Some environmentalist have seized on the Riverkeeper opinion as proof that Sotomayor bleeds eco-green, while industry is afraid that she is insensitive to the costs imposed by green regulation. But both sides are misreading the Judge’s opinion.”

Judge Sonia Sotomayor’s paper trail on the environment is slim, but one decision has drawn praise from environmentalists, and some concerns from business. In Riverkeeper v. EPA, Sotomayor wrote the opinion for the court of appeals. She found that the Clean Water Act prohibited EPA from conducting cost-benefit analysis when deciding whether to impose regulations at power plants that would protect fish, but have high costs for utility companies.

Obama is going to start facing many more similar choices. Because the Mass. v. EPA ruling dealt with cars and light trucks, regulating those sources was naturally the first on the list. But this is only the first step. There are petitions on aircrafts, marine vessels, and fuels collecting dust that will need to be wrestled with. The President’s legal obligation to deal with these petitions will likely force additional greenhouse gas regulations into the pipeline in the near future.

Is the increased spending working, though? Michael A. Livermore, executive director of the Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University, says in TNR that by comparison to say, utilities, big oil is left out in the cold: