In the News

Outside the auspices of COP16, a number of developing countries like India and Chile are starting to consider using market mechanisms like carbon caps to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. That climate action is taking place at all is good news at a conference that doesn’t appear to be headed towards a breakthrough. In the time remaining in Cancun, negotiations should try to deal with these budding programs.

While the climate change negotiations in Cancun are unlikely to result in a global cap on greenhouse gas emissions, forward motion is possible in many key areas. Among them, forest preservation is the brightest spot for progress in what has now become a very dreary policy forecast.

Clouds of pessimism hang over Cancun, largely due to the absence of a domestic climate law in the United States. Certainly, it makes it more difficult for the developed world to ask the developing countries, like India or China, to move towards binding carbon reductions. But success is possible on smaller-bore issues that that require immediate attention, are relatively easier to address, and will have a major impact.

A recent review of state regulatory review procedures by the Institute for Policy Integrity noted that “Florida’s entire regulatory review process needs to focus more on maximizing social benefits, not just on minimizing compliance costs.”

That’s why a new report from New York University’s Institute for Policy Integrity couldn’t arrive at a better time. The report analyzes and compares regulatory review systems in all 50 states, and even gives them grades. Not surprisingly, no state earned an “A.” The average grade, however, was a miserable “D+,” which was the grade conferred on New York’s supposedly top-of-the-heap review system.

Currently our nation’s nascent alternative energy industry is being buoyed by a system of tax credits and energy grants that are set to expire at the end of the year. Absent a price on carbon, these incentives are needed to keep the new market’s pulse from stopping. It may be that extending these credits will be all the support for alternative energy that will come from a federal government heading for gridlock, but we should not fool ourselves into thinking we have done enough, or done the right thing.

With no hope for a national comprehensive climate package in the near term, the focus is shifting to the states and their existing emissions policies. Can the states create the United States’ climate policy? During today’s OnPoint, Michael Livermore, executive director of the Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University School of Law, discusses the emerging policy strategy in the states and explains how U.S. EPA’s pending regulation of emissions will affect existing state greenhouse gas programs.

The Institute for Policy Integrity last week issued a report on regulatory systems of individual states, and New York received a grade of D-plus. The underlying problem for the state’s poor grade was not the regulatory system’s size or the costs it adds to employers, taxpayers and others. Those are true problems, for sure, but this report focused much of its analysis on the effectiveness of the regulations.

New York gets a D-plus grade for its regulation of industries that affect air and water quality, job growth and other essentials, according to a report by a think tank. “It’s not a problem of too much regulation,” said Richard Revesz, faculty director of the Institute for Policy Integrity, which conducted the study. “It’s a question of crafting the right kind of regulation.”

New York gets a D-plus grade for its regulation of industries that effect air and water quality, job growth and other essentials, according to a report by an independent think tank.