In the News

In a recent blog post, Resources for the Future (RFF) Senior Fellow Joshua Linn and Christopher Holt, an economic fellow at the Institute for Policy Integrity, offer a policy approach for reducing levels of harmful ozone: targeting ozone emissions that are most likely to violate air-quality standards. “This targeting could be accomplished by introducing trading ratios, such that emissions rules are stricter for firms at locations or times of day that are more likely to see ozone violations,” say Holt and Linn.

Environmentalists are bracing for the Biden administration to approve Willow. If it does, it’s unclear what difference a higher social cost metric would have made. “In theory — and this is what advocates have been saying — the agency could conduct some sort of weighing of costs and benefits,” said Max Sarinsky. “And there the social cost of carbon could factor prominently ... But right now, that's not what they do,” he added. “In most cases, that has meant ‘If there's an interest in fossil fuel development, we're going to approve it.’”

Energy conservation has long been the main justification for having daylight-saving time. But there is no compelling scientific evidence that daylight-saving time conserves energy. Recent evidence shows that the effect is smaller than previously thought and very much dependent on local circumstances.

Recently environmentalists have touted a series of studies that find links between gas stoves and health risks. An April 2022 report from the Institute for Policy Integrity summarizes that “[w]ithin just a few minutes of cooking . . . pollutant concentrations can exceed levels” that both EPA and the World Health Organization “have deemed unsafe and linked to respiratory illness, cardiovascular problems, cancer, and other serious health conditions.”

The downward trend of ozone levels has slowed in recent years despite regulatory efforts at the federal and state levels. New research suggests that regulation that targets emitters when high-ozone events are most likely could be a cost-effective way of further reducing ozone levels.

Both the House and the Senate this week passed legislation overturning a Labor Department rule designed to ensure that fund managers remain capable of considering environmental, social, and governance (ESG) factors when making investments. The bill "has to be the ne plus ultra of hysterical overreaction to any policy with the word climate in it," writes NYU law professor Jack Lienke, an expert on environmental law.

Environmental advocates have insisted for years on the need to robustly account for climate impacts when permitting fossil-fuel infrastructure. Courts and agencies are starting to listen. A recent decision from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit and a new guidance document from the White House Council on Environmental Quality mark the latest developments in ensuring that federal agencies consider climate-change impacts before greenlighting fossil-fuel projects.

Top Hill Democrats are backing the Biden EPA’s legal defense of its light-duty vehicle greenhouse gas rule, asserting that challengers’ claims the standards violate the “major questions” doctrine ignore “explicit direction” from Congress and “would severely limit the ability of Congress itself to craft effective legislation” if affirmed. Other amicus briefs backing EPA filed by a March 3 deadline include filings by the Institute for Policy Integrity.

Gas stoves, particularly those that are not well ventilated emit air pollutants such as nitrogen dioxide, carbon monoxide and fine particulate matter into the home at levels the Environmental Protection Agency and World Health Organization have said are unsafe and that are linked to respiratory illness, including asthma, cardiovascular problems, cancer and other health conditions. That’s according to reports by groups such as the Institute for Policy Integrity and the American Chemical Society.

University of Virginia law professor Michael Livermore explains the significance of the Biden administration's proposal to increase its estimate of the social cost of carbon, which federal regulatory agencies use to measure the economic consequences of greenhouse gas emissions. Livermore's 2022 article in the Yale Journal on Regulation, Costs, Confusion and Climate Change, coauthored with Justin Gundlach of New York University School of Law, looked at the SCC's effectiveness as a cost-benefit analysis tool.