In the News

The report, which was published on Thursday by the New York University School of Law’s Institute for Policy Integrity, calculates that other nations’ existing climate policies, by lessening the impacts of climate change, have already benefited the United States to the tune of more than $200 billion, and additional pledges for future action could save the country more than $2 trillion by the year 2030. This number could rise above $10 trillion by mid-century.

Last Friday, moments after the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) formally published its Clean Power Plan, which regulates carbon dioxide emissions from the power sector, opponents of the rule filed suit to strike it down, and, in the meantime, to stay its application. In the press and in last week’s congressional hearing (disclosure: one of us was a witness at this hearing), the EPA’s critics continued to make unwarranted claims about overreach, economic catastrophe and unconstitutionality. They’re hoping that this clamor will provide cover for state policymakers who want to resist complying with the rule.

“The arguments against the Clean Power Plan are going to be the ones we’ve already seen,” said Richard Revesz of New York University School of Law’s Institute for Policy Integrity.

The U.S. Department of the Interior announced last week that it is canceling future lease sales in federal Arctic waters off Alaska’s northern coast, a decision that places future Arctic offshore drilling on ice.

Coal companies should be charged as much as five times what it costs them for surface mining on federal lands, according to a new report. “In some cases, it’s gaming the system, in other cases, it’s using the rules to the best of their advantage,” says Jayni Hein, the study’s lead author and policy director at the NYU School of Law’s Institute for Policy Integrity, which released the report this week. “There’s no reason these companies should be able to lease coal for the same price they were able to decades ago.”

Energy subsidies have become a hot topic on the presidential campaign trail. Jeb Bush recently called for an end to all subsidies–those that support fossil fuels as well as those aiding renewable energy. Most Democrats in the presidential race support ending tax breaks for fossil-fuel companies, but believe that subsidies for renewables are needed to help these newer industries grow rapidly. Both policy proposals are economically inefficient.

By regulating methane emissions, the EPA compels companies to act in the best interests of the public and to reduce emissions, even if individual controls aren’t immediately profitable.

It’s time for the federal government to stop leasing land to gas and oil companies, a new report argues

This is not easy to answer. Assigning a monetary value to environmental harm is notoriously tricky. There is, after all, no market for intact ecosystems or endangered species.

President Obama’s Clean Power Plan has rightly been hailed as the most important action any president has taken to address the climate crisis.