In the News

Mere hours after the signing ceremony for Trump’s executive order, EPA filed a motion in the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, asking the court to put a pending case about the Clean Power Plan on indefinite hold. The court should say no.

Experts said Tuesday that getting rid of the Clean Power Plan, the 2014 plan that put a limit to the amount of carbon dioxide produced by a range of power plants, will be far harder than just signing a document. “The executive order does not make the Clean Power (Plan) go away,” said Richard Revesz, Director of the Institute for Policy Integrity at NYU School of Law. “This is the first move of a long chess game that will take years to unfold, and future moves will be far more challenging.”

Richard Revesz, the director of the Institute for Policy Integrity, a nonpartisan think tank at the New York University School of Law dedicated to improving the quality of government decision-making, told ABC News by email that the order will ultimately hurt the economy. “There is no consistent evidence that regulations contribute to long-term changes in the unemployment rate, and rolling back regulations will not create jobs,” he said.

“The executive order has some symbolic importance for some of President Trump’s supporters, but on the ground it’s not clear how much difference it’s going to make,” says Richard Revesz, an environmental law expert at the Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University School of Law.

Trump and Pruitt have both at times dismissed climate science—Trump infamously called it a Chinese hoax. Environmental lawyers think these pronouncements could strengthen their lawsuits. “It is possible that statements of that sort will come back to haunt them,” Richard Revesz, a New York University environmental law professor, said. “It would suggest they prejudge the science before consulting with scientists. There is a pretty high burden for departing from an existing rule.”

The “Social Cost of Carbon” at $40 per ton of avoided carbon emissions is the presumed payoff of cleaner electricity, and more efficient cars and fridges. The White House wants to gut this calculation, but Denise Grab at NYU says it won’t be easy. A federal court upheld this concept nine years ago. “The 2008 case found that the agency had to consider the benefits of greenhouse gas reductions, so it can’t just ignore those effects,” said Grab.

Richard Revesz discusses the expected Trump executive order on climate change and shares his concerns about overturning the Clean Power Plan, the abandonment of the current approach to determining the benefits of carbon dioxide reductions, and the return to coal leases on federal lands.

It’s permissible for a government official to announce the beginning of “a process that might lead to a change in policy,” said Richard Revesz, director of the Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University. But, he said, it would be “very problematic” if the administration explicitly compelled officials to, say, lower the government’s metric known as the social cost of carbon, which estimates the effects of climate change.

Throughout his confirmation hearing and in a recent interview, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt wrapped himself in the mantle of federalism, calling the shared distribution of power between the federal government and states a “bedrock principle” of environmental laws. Pruitt accused the Obama administration of intruding on the autonomy that environmental laws give to the states and vowed to set this balance right. But Pruitt’s views are inconsistent with any coherent vision of federalism.

Indeed, Pruitt’s comments on CNBC might even hurt any effort at repeal. Opponents could point to them in court as evidence that EPA’s new conclusion was being driven by the administrator’s unfounded views on science rather than careful analysis. “The comment could come to haunt Administrator Pruitt in court in the same way that the ‘Muslim ban’ comment has haunted President Trump in recent rulings,” says Richard Revesz, a law professor at New York University.