In the News

Climate change — already a well-known threat to our weather patterns, infrastructure, electric grids, health and safety — also presents a profound and growing threat to our financial system. Public and private sector economic experts must — and increasingly are starting to — take steps to protect against that threat, including at the highest levels of the federal government.

Emission reductions from a permanent leasing ban would be relatively small. But environmentalists and others who want more aggressive action against climate change say a ban would nudge the economy in a new direction. “The federal government is a huge player here. The government has market power,” said attorney Max Sarinsky with New York University Law School’s Institute for Policy Integrity. “If you restrict the supply (of oil and gas), you alter the market and you create a better environment for more sustainable fuels.”

Another supporter of the approach is Jason Schwartz, legal director of New York University’s Institute for Policy Integrity, which submitted a 2013 petition asking EPA to use its authority to regulate foreign emissions under section 115 of the air law. The Trump EPA denied that petition in the same letter denying CBD’s. Schwartz tells Inside EPA that section 115 “is one of several tools that could be appropriate for addressing climate change. And we’re pleased that EPA now seems to be prioritizing careful analysis on matters like this, in contrast to the Trump administration’s rushed approach done behind closed doors.”

“My immediate reaction is that these states should have a very hard time convincing a judge that a President asking his agencies to work together, to engage with the public and stakeholders, and then to follow the best available science and economics to evaluate the consequences of their decisions, is somehow illegal,” Jason A. Schwartz, legal director of the Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University, told Bloomberg Law.

Twelve states filed suit in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri, accusing President Joe Biden of exceeding the executive branch’s power in restoring Obama-era values for an analytical tool called the social cost of greenhouse gases. “My immediate reaction is that these states should have a very hard time convincing a judge that a President asking his agencies to work together, to engage with the public and stakeholders, and then to follow the best available science and economics to evaluate the consequences of their decisions, is somehow illegal,” Jason A. Schwartz, legal director for New York University’s Institute for Policy Integrity.

In one of his last acts in office, then-Administrator Andrew Wheeler denied CBD’s petition and other similar requests for GHG rulemakings under various sections of the air law. He rejected most of a February 2013 petition from New York University’s Institute for Policy Integrity that sought to regulate GHGs under the air law's section 115 that governs international air pollution, though Wheeler left in place portions of the petition asking EPA to regulate GHGs under section 111’s new source performance standards, the Title II mobile source program and the Title VI stratospheric ozone program.

The SEC announced that the new climate focus would not be limited to its Division of Corporate Finance—the SEC has created a new Climate and ESG Task Force in the Division of Enforcement. A recent report from the Institute for Policy Integrity at NYU and the Environmental Defense Fund contends that Corporate Finance has failed to use the review process to elicit more disclosure.

The Biden administration has reverted to an Obama-era method for calculating the social cost of greenhouse gases, which will be key in evaluating government actions affecting climate change. NYU Law Professor Richard L. Revesz examines the change and says some related actions, including updating the discount rate used to evaluate future consequences, need to happen in the coming months.

The cost of greenhouse gas emissions was calculated to be $1 per ton under the Trump administration. The Biden administration is increasing it to $51 per ton. Professor Richard Revesz explains what that could mean in practice and the rationale behind it (at 01:14:52).

In the last four years, that highly devalued, flawed SCC number was used in numerous regulatory processes. UCS worked closely with a coalition expertly led by the Institute for Policy Integrity at NYU to file comments in as many of these regulatory dockets as possible, getting on the record each time why the Trump admin SCC was so deeply flawed, so out of line with science, and how it needed to be fixed.