In the News

A House Natural Resources subcommittee will meet this week to debate the emissions impact of the federal oil and gas program in the Gulf of Mexico. Witnesses include Max Sarinsky, senior attorney at the Institute for Policy Integrity.

“It’s unprecedented for OIRA to strengthen a rule to increase net benefits,” said James Goodwin, a senior analyst at the Center for Progressive Reform. “This is a good thing,” said Richard Revesz, a New York University professor whose name was floated as a potential Biden OIRA administrator. “To the extent OIRA is doing its job, it should push the agency to maximize net benefits. I don’t know if it happens all the time.”

Two pending lawsuits — led respectively by Louisiana’s Jeff Landry and Missouri’s Eric Schmitt — not only mount an unprecedented and dangerous attack on science, but also bungle bedrock legal principles. The lawsuits challenge the federal interagency working group’s ongoing assessment of the social cost of carbon, which estimates the incremental cost to society of a unit of greenhouse gas emissions.

A federal court in Louisiana heard oral argument Dec. 7 in a case brought by Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry (R) that is gaining national attention. The case seeks to prevent federal agencies from considering scientific estimates of climate change impacts. It could have profound consequences, but not the ones Landry suggests. While Landry’s lawsuit is cloaked in hyperbole about federal takeovers and taxes, no such risks exist. But the suit does threaten to upset settled, bipartisan principles of administrative law.

Getting greener mail trucks would help combat climate change — and all of the Postal Service’s competitors are doing it.

TGP representatives themselves project annual emissions from the East 300 project at more than 2.34 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent per year. The Institute for Policy Integrity, a non-partisan organization at New York University School of Law, used a federal government model to calculate that the project would be responsible for damage of more than $131 million per year.

Unlike most executive orders that undergo a lengthy and sometimes fractious regulatory process before they are enacted, procurement rules can take effect almost immediately, said Richard L. Revesz, a professor of environmental law at New York University. He called the executive orders “very significant.”

By changing the underlying risk profile of certain insurance products, climate change threatens insurers’ business model. At the same time, insurers also face risk as investors, as insurers’ assets may be overvalued due to unassigned climate risk. Improved data, research and resilience planning can contribute to a more robust and more equitable insurance system, while improving financial disclosure requirements can limit investment risk.

A top White House official says the Biden administration is planning to review under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) various federal programs as a way to help speed later review of related low-carbon projects, an effort aimed at easing the challenge officials face as they seek to expedite such projects while also ensuring rigorous reviews. The White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) is looking at “ways that programmatic analysis can be used more frequently and effectively by federal agencies,” Jayni Foley Hein, CEQ’s senior director for NEPA, said Oct. 19.

Without a doubt, all environmental rules will be challenged in court and former President Trump dramatically increased the number of conservatives in courts around the country. “From what I’ve observed, [the Biden administration is] being careful,” noted Ricky Revesz, a professor at New York University. “The question isn’t if they get sued. It is what is the probability of winning after litigation.”