In the News

As Olga Khazan of the Atlantic reports, the Trump administration did such a poor job of writing and implementing its own policies that many either have already been struck down by courts or will be straightforward to dismantle: As of April, out of the 259 regulations, guidance documents, and agency memoranda it issued that were challenged in court, 200, or 77 percent, were unsuccessful, according to a tracker from the Institute for Policy Integrity.

What is the cost of our carbon footprint — not just in dollars, but in lives? According to a paper published on Thursday, it is soberingly high, and perhaps high enough to help shift attitudes about how much we should spend on fighting climate change. Richard Revesz, a professor at New York University School of Law, praised the new work, which extends research that he and others have done to view the social cost of carbon as the beginning of an understanding of the costs of climate change, not the full cost.

Richard Revesz said the proposal to ramp up annual requirements from 3.7% to 5% positions the administration for future carbon reductions. “A tightening of the standard over the next few years is productive because it will require a less big leap — a big leap — but a less big leap after 2026,” he said. “Starting there and moving up is in my mind a reasonable approach, but we can’t stop there. We have to keep moving forward.”

The rule process is specific, technical, and tedious, which did not exactly fit Trump’s style. Some experts say Trump’s agencies wrote their rules carelessly, failing to provide good explanations for what they were doing. “​​You do have to explain why you’re making the change you’re making and give some good reasons for it. And you have to respond to criticism from the public,” Jack Lienke, the regulatory-policy director of the Institute for Policy Integrity, told me. “And the Trump administration often didn’t do that.”

The agencies are not expected to meet this week’s deadline, and questions are swirling about the scope of a cars rule that could play a central role in cutting emissions from the nation’s biggest source of CO2. “Is the proposal going to reinstate the Obama standards, is it going to embody the agreement California reached with auto companies, which was less stringent, or will it be somewhere in between?” said Richard Revesz, a professor at the New York University School of Law.

While FERC’s new climate reviews are useful and a step in the right direction, failing to determine the significance of a project’s emissions could open the door to more lawsuits, said Max Sarinsky, a senior attorney at the Institute for Policy Integrity at NYU School of Law. “The bigger question is, what do you do now that you know what these emissions are? How is that going to affect your decisionmaking process?” Sarinsky said. “So far, FERC hasn’t shown that it will.”

The Institute for Policy Integrity, a regulatory think tank based at New York University, says in July 6 comments that OMB should “detail sustainable methodologies and procedures that agencies can implement,” and identifies four principles to guide such action.

Justin Gundlach explained that the New York Public Service Commission is in a tough spot—coordinating the decline of the gas system is deeply complicated, and the state is still in the midst of a process to determine what, exactly, that decline should look like. 

Richard Revesz is interviewed about the social cost of carbon and its crucial role in crafting smarter energy and climate policies. Justin Gundlach and Peter Howard discuss how the SCC can be further improved.

Advocates of the newly formed Initiative on Climate Risk and Resilience Law (ICRRL) are advocating the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) bolster climate change protections with the finance industry. The ICRRL is a joint initiative that includes the Columbia Law School’s Sabin Center for Climate Change Law, the Environmental Defense Fund, the Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University School of Law, and the Vanderbilt Law School.