In the News

The SEC's risk alert confirmed what a joint 11 February report by the nonprofit Environmental Defense Fund and New York University School of Law's Institute for Policy Integrity uncovered, as well as a separate 19 February study by the Center for American Progress. Both reports pointed to the lack of consistency in reporting of climate and related environmental impact disclosures.

Government and investors are quickly moving to quantify the risks posed by climate change and make that part of their financial decision-making. But many companies remain unsure how to measure the threat of climate change to their business, and whether or how to report those risks to investors and the public. That task will be easier if the SEC provides more clarity about which, and how much, data a company needs to disclose on its risks, said Madison Condon, a professor of environmental law at Boston University who co-authored a Feb. report on the SEC’s climate oversight.

Republican attorneys general are determined to mount numerous legal challenges against President Joe Biden, creating a formidable roadblock to the president’s agenda. Over the last four years, Democratic attorneys general led an unprecedented blitz against Trump’s policies, filing hundreds of lawsuits. The Trump administration suffered defeat in nearly 80% of the 207 cases brought against it in court, according to The Institute for Policy Integrity.

In two books published a dozen years apart, AnBryce Professor of Law and Dean Emeritus Richard Revesz has established himself as a leading evangelist for rationality in governance—specifically, the use of cost-benefit analysis by US administrative agencies to support regulations they plan to implement. In 2008, Revesz published Retaking Rationality: How Cost-Benefit Analysis Can Better Protect the Environment and Our Health. His follow-up, published in December 2020, is Reviving Rationality: Saving Cost-Benefit Analysis for the Sake of the Environment and Our Health. In a Q&A, Revesz answers questions about recent approaches to regulation and what lies ahead.

“The only way to put this in context is to compare it to the cost of inaction, which is monumental in terms of public health, extreme weather events, climate refugees and economic destruction,” said Anne Kelly, vice president of government relations at Ceres. A survey of 730 global economists published this week by the Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University’s School of Law showed that the benefits of acting on climate far outweigh the price.

The climate crisis is more than a political topic of discussion. Economists are already outlining the potential for worsening inequality, trillions of dollars in climate-related damages, and depressed global growth. According to the Institute for Policy Integrity at the NYU School of Law’s latest survey, about 74% of economists agree that “immediate and drastic” action is needed to cut emissions.

An analysis from the Institute for Policy Integrity says a reformed version of a Clinton-era executive order could help force federal agencies to consider how their regulatory policies may be disproportionately harming low-income and minority communities, while providing a legal framework for enforcing more equitable policies on pollutants including greenhouse gases.

As economic director of the American think tank Institute for Policy Integrity and researcher on the social cost of carbon, Peter Howard's work tries to estimate the damages done to the environment and human health by CO2 emissions. Recently, Peter Howard published with his colleague Derek Sylvan the results of one of the largest polls of international economists who have analyzed various effects of climate change. It seems that, even in this discipline, a certain consensus on this problem is beginning to form.

Some of the more interesting survey findings come from groups who seem more credible than consumers in their opinions. Economists, for example. Consider a recent global survey conducted by the Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University School of Law. Nearly three-quarters of the 738 economists around the world who responded said they agree "immediate and drastic action is necessary" to address the climate crisis.

The business lobby is using a Texas legal challenge to frustrate the Biden administration’s agenda for the gig economy and throw up burdensome roadblocks for the U.S. Labor Department as it moves to nix a Trump-era rule on independent contractors. “These are legal skirmishes designed to kind of raise the cost of changing the rule,” said Richard Revesz, an administrative law professor at New York University.