In the News

News of Lisa Heinzerling’s departure from her position as head of the EPA’s Office of Policy and Planning doesn’t need to mean the winding-down of aggressive action at the EPA.

When the Clean Air Act was passed, forty years ago this week, climate change was a theory. Since then, the scientific community has reached a consensus about the greenhouse effects of carbon pollution. We are now aware that these gases pose a serious threat to the environment and economy and therefore, must be regulated under the law.

“They are mainly some broad-based recommendations,” said Michael Livermore, executive director of the Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University School of Law. In some areas, such policies may already be in place, he said. “There is probably an aspirational aspect to this, but there is a lot of heterogeneity in countries and within countries in terms of local institutes and so on. It’s heavily dependent on the region,” he said.

When Hurricane Katrina made landfall in southeastern Louisiana on August 29, 2005, it caused extreme flooding up and down the Gulf coastline. Four years later, the Gulf has made a dramatic recovery—thanks in part to the billions of dollars in aid sent via the national flood insurance program. The hurricane certainly underscored the need for federal aid in the event of a natural disaster. But was the federal flood insurance program the best way to get aid to those in need?

Scott Holladay, an economics fellow who works on climate issues for the Institute for Policy Integrity, said in the future, that could change. “We expect technology to develop so cellulosic ethanol would become a practical fuel source, and we think that the renewable fuel standards will help that to happen and encourage that type of technology development,” he said.

As campaign season begins to come into full swing, the timeline for passing a climate bill has been constricted to two weeks and the options on the table are far less desirable than the more economically efficient and comprehensive carbon caps originally proposed. In the time that remains, Senators scrambling to piece together a package should keep striving for three things that will improve the effectiveness and economic efficiency of this bill.

Manzi makes several important concessions: he acknowledges that denying climate science is nonsense, that we face a genuine threat, and that we should take some steps to address that threat. But Manzi goes off track with his argument that the economics and science of climate change are insufficient to justify actually trying to control greenhouse gas emissions.

“The program is in considerable debt and there is no way to get out of it. Instead of dealing with the debt and the structural deficit the program has, Congress keeps kicking the can down the road,” says Scott Holladay, an economics fellow the Institute for Policy Integrity at NYU Law School. He says the program is running a $19 billion deficit since 2005’s record hurricane season.

The EPA can and must proceed with new rules — but it must do so using market-based mechanisms that will not clash with possible future congressional actions.

The CLEAR Act would spur green energy investment while avoiding regional disparities, according to a new study by the Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University School of Law. The legislation would cap national greenhouse gas emissions, auctioning off all allowances for emissions and then refunding 75 percent of federal revenues to taxpayers, using the other 25 percent to invest in green technologies.