In the News

“When an agency wants to do something that’s harmful to the American people, it typically tries to hide it,” Richard Revesz of the Institute for Policy Integrity told Johnson. “What’s unusual here is that the EPA just comes out and says it.”

The Clean Air Act also requires the EPA to define the “best system of emission reduction” for existing facilities, such as power plants. But the EPA’s new plan “has identified a system of emission reduction that is, at best, mediocre, far from ‘best,’” Richard Revesz, a professor of law at New York University and an expert on environmental law, told E&E News this week.

Trump officials contend that their carbon approach better reflects the way the government has traditionally done cost-benefit analyses. Critics argue that this approach is inappropriate for global, multigenerational problems like climate change, and that newer research suggests the social cost of carbon may be even higher than the Obama administration estimated. Ultimately, the courts could decide which view prevails. “This will be part of the legal challenges to these regulatory rollbacks,” said Richard L. Revesz, an expert in environmental law at New York University. “The reasons for why the Trump administration picked these numbers for the social cost of carbon are going to be scrutinized.”

“When an agency wants to do something that’s harmful to the American people, it typically tries to hide it,” said Richard Revesz, director of the Institute for Policy Integrity at the New York University School of Law. “What’s unusual here is that the EPA just comes out and says it.”

The projection of increased deaths and costs marks “what’s extraordinary about this proposal,” said Richard Revesz, dean emeritus at the New York University School of Law. “To their credit, they tell us directly, ‘We are doing something to cause great harm to the American people.’”

“In regulating greenhouse gas pollution, the EPA is legally required to use the ‘best system of emission reduction,’ not a mediocre or downright counterproductive system of emission reduction,” said Richard Revesz, dean emeritus at NYU School of Law and director of its Institute for Policy Integrity. “This proposal is an enormous step backwards, and it will have severe repercussions for public health and the climate.”

“In regulating greenhouse gas pollution, the EPA is legally required to use the ‘best system of emission reduction,’ not a mediocre or downright counterproductive system of emission reduction,” said Richard Revesz, director of the Institute for Policy Integrity at NYU School of Law. “This proposal is an enormous step backwards, and it will have severe repercussions for public health and the climate.”

Writing in The Hill, Bethany A. Davis Noll and Richard Revesz note that the scientific and evidentiary basis legally required for the Trump environmental regulations is largely absent. These legal deficiencies have led some experts to predict that the seeming revolution in regulatory policy will come a cropper, as federal judges on the D.C. Circuit and then the Supreme Court throw out the shoddy work. Courts to the rescue!

“It would be hard for the Trump administration to say [the Clean Power Plan] is a net bad for the American people; the total benefits were significantly more than the cost,” said Richard Revesz, director of the Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University. Revesz noted that Trump’s EPA was only able to legally justify rolling back the rule by “mangling” the Clean Power Plan’s direct greenhouse gas benefits and its additional co-benefits of cutting pollutants like fine particles.

It’s difficult to say whether the Trump administration can legally rescind the California waiver. A report New York University School of Law released Wednesday argued the EPA lacks the legal authority to withdraw the waiver. No president has ever tried. And, according to David Driesen, an environmental law professor at Syracuse University, arguing that the state’s CO2 rules don’t meet the standards set out in the Clean Air Act is “just not a plausible argument.”