In the News

The tumultuous state of US environmental regulation during the Trump administration was implicit in the title of the 10th anniversary conference of NYU Law’s Institute for Policy Integrity: “Energy and Environmental Policy: The Quest for Rationality.” But when environmental policy experts convened at the Law School in late September, the two keynote speakers, both seasoned veterans of regulatory battles, articulated reasons for cautious optimism.

“This report will be used in court in significant ways,” said Richard L. Revesz, an expert in environmental law at New York University. “I can imagine a lawyer for the Trump administration being asked by a federal judge, ‘How can the federal government acknowledge the seriousness of the problem, and then set aside the rules that protect the American people from the problem?’ And they might squirm around coming up with an answer.”

Richard Revesz, director of the Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University, said plaintiffs would likely employ a two-pronged argument to defend the waiver from the Trump administration’s attack.

“Our state has spoken loud and clear that we recognize the importance of the industry to the state’s economic well-being,” said Colorado Petroleum Council Executive Director Tracee Bentley, in a statement. The council claimed that passage of the “setback” rule would effectively outlaw new drilling in the state and cost some 150,000 jobs. (Such industry job estimates are almost invariably excessive, an Institute for Policy Integrity study showed in 2012.)

“It’s significant that Democrats now have this power,” said Richard Revesz. “A lot of the efforts to roll back Obama administration regulations are on weak legal footing. There are glaring legal or analytical weaknesses. Bringing attention to them can be a good strategy.”

The administration’s so-called accomplishments, which include rolling back hazardous waste regulations and consumer protection rules, will inflict great harms on the American people, resulting in additional deaths, illnesses, and bankruptcies. The damages done by these heedless regulatory rollbacks significantly exceed the cost savings for regulated industries.

“If designed properly, a carbon market or carbon price would always be looking for the cheapest carbon, whether it was energy efficiency or whatever the cheapest fuel source was, that’s what the carbon price would find,” Commissioner Cheryl LaFleur told Law360 at a recent energy and environmental policy conference hosted by New York University School of Law’s Institute for Policy Integrity.

Every institution, no matter how much good it brings to the American people, has room for improvement. But opponents of the regulatory state ignore the net benefits of regulation.

Speaking Friday at the Institute for Policy Integrity’s 10th anniversary conference at the New York University School of Law, McCarthy ticked off a long list of environmental policies that frustrate her. Some of her complaints: Climate science has been scrubbed from government websites; the administration is changing how it calculates the benefits of slashing greenhouse gases; and President Trump has said he’ll exit the Paris climate accord.

In the panel discussion, Richard Revesz, director of the Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University, slammed its impact on cost-benefit analysis. “[Executive Order] 13771 requires a cap on costs, suggesting the goal of the regulatory system is to minimize overall regulatory costs, not to maximize the net benefits of regulation, which is the hallmark of cost-benefit analysis,” he said.