In the News

“It would have a chilling effect on anything California would do,” said Richard L. Revesz, a professor of environmental law at New York University. “Any state that does something significant is going to have to worry about finding itself in the cross hairs of federal litigation.”

Just as there is a danger of climatic feedback loops, there is a danger of what Peter Howard and Michael Livermore (of NYU and UVA Law Schools respectively) call, in a recent Harvard Law Review paper, “sociopolitical feedbacks.” Prudence suggests acting aggressively while coordinated action is still possible.

“This court decision is very good news for public health in many parts of the country,” Richard Revesz, director of the Institute for Policy Integrity at NYU School of Law, said in a statement. Revesz said the Trump administration “has consistently flouted” a core obligation of the Clean Air Act, to protect the air quality of downwind states that suffer from excessive upwind pollution. “A number of related cases are pending and this decision may be the harbinger of further defeats for the EPA,” he said.

Jayni Foley Hein, the Natural Resources Director for the Institute for Policy Integrity at NYU School of Law, told Newsweek, “The analysis here is a disservice to the American people, who deserve to understand the full environmental and economic implications of drilling in ANWR for an estimated 70 years.” Hein says this move from the Trump White House Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is a 180-degree turn on previous administrations, who have sought to protect the Refuge since its inception in 1960.

Environmental groups, along with several Democratic attorneys general, have filed more than 100 lawsuits challenging environmental rollbacks under the Trump administration. While many cases are ongoing, many have led to rulings favorable to environmentalists. Of 28 cases that have been resolved, according to a tracker from the New York University Law School’s Institute for Policy Integrity, the administration has prevailed only twice.

The Trump administration will make the case that the law must provide the ability to revoke a waiver because it provides the ability to grant one, said Richard Revesz, a leading scholar of environmental and regulatory law and the director of the nonpartisan Institute for Policy Integrity at the New York University Law School. “That argument works sometimes, but it doesn’t work other times,” Revesz said, explaining that there are reasons to believe that a waiver can’t be revoked in this particular case. For one, he said, California has obligations to meet certain federal environmental goals, and its plan to meet those goals is premised on the waiver. In addition, California has a strong interest in protecting the health and safety of its citizens.

At its full potential, energy storage will improve grid efficiency and resilience, while helping to reduce emissions. But if we don’t get the accompanying policies right, we risk falling short of these improvements.

If justices ultimately decide in favor of the Trump administration and find the Clean Air Act does not allow the government to direct broad changes to the nation’s energy deployment, it could permanently weaken the United States’ ability to tackle its contributions to global warming. “It would have a devastating effect on the ability of future administrations to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act,” said Richard L. Revesz, a professor at New York University who specializes in environmental law. “It would essentially make it extremely difficult to regulate greenhouse gases effectively,” he said.

Pay no attention to the premature deaths behind the curtain. That is the upshot of the analysis supporting the Environmental Protection Agency’s so-called Affordable Clean Energy rule, which public health groups are challenging in a lawsuit filed earlier this month.

Though standards limiting vehicle emissions have played a critical role in controlling U.S. air pollution, the Environmental Protection Agency and National Highway Traffic Safety Administration have imminent plans to roll back emissions standards for model years 2021 and beyond. As part of the proposal, the agencies have put California in their crosshairs. But leaving California alone could help keep the air cleaner and avoid the political and legal uncertainty caused by picking that fight with California.