In the News

“The executive order has no legal significance at all,” said Richard L. Revesz, a professor of environmental law at New York University. “It’s like the president calling Scott Pruitt and telling him to start the legal proceedings. It does the same thing as a phone call or a tweet. It just signals that the president wants it to happen.”

When EPA issues a regulation, say for mercury from power plants, it also counts as co-benefits the reductions in particulate matter that would result. Jack Lienke of New York University’s Institute for Policy Integrity says EPA uses a model that reflects smaller health gains from reductions at lower concentrations. Its model is based on peer-reviewed studies and has been reviewed by the agency’s independent Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee, he said.

Immediately after his inauguration, President Trump met with business leaders telling them he hopes to cut regulation. What does this mean for corporate growth and consumers? How do voters on the left and the right view these changes and is there common ground to be found? MPR chief economics commentator Chris Farrell spoke with Michael Mandel at the Progressive Policy Institute in Washington and Richard Revesz, director of the Institute for Policy Integrity at NYU School of Law.

You probably thought that last week’s only notable debate was the one between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump at Hofstra University, but, on Tuesday, supporters and opponents of EPA’s Clean Power Plan had a high-stakes showdown of their own in Washington, D.C.: a seven-hour oral argument before the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. The proceedings may not have spawned an SNL sketch, but in the wonky world of environmental law, they were a very big deal.

There are some basic adaptation measures that countries might consider at the beginning of the supply chain as well, said Peter Howard, the economics director at the New York University School of Law’s Institute for Policy Integrity. These could include increases in air conditioning or other technological advances designed to help laborers cope with changes in the climate. One important point to consider, he added, is that under future warming scenarios, some parts of the world may reach a threshold in which outdoor labor actually becomes physically impossible. Some past research has suggested that under extreme future warming conditions, some temperature spikes could actually exceed the limits of the human respiratory system — an idea that underscores the importance of thinking about adaptation strategies now.

“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.

Social welfare would almost certainly be higher with an even tighter ozone standard.

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.

The Mercury and Air Toxics Standards, also known as “MATS,” are the culmination of a very long regulatory process.

In the final ruling of an historic Supreme Court term, the Obama administration was handed a loss on Monday, but the fallout will likely be minimal. In a 5-4 decision written by Justice Antonin Scalia, the court found that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) should have considered costs when it first began the regulatory process for its Mercury and Air Toxics Standards.