In the News

While government subsidies for “green technology” may be a piece of the total picture, the only way to efficiently generate the levels of investment needed to wean the economy from carbon-heavy sources of power is a price signal which could be generated as a tax or, more likely, as a cap-and-trade.

Heating buildings can be deadly. That’s according to a report released last week by NYU’s Institute for Policy Integrity. The document, entitled “Residual Risks: The Unseen Costs of Using Dirty Oil in New York City Boilers,” finds that the low-grade heating oil used in many apartment buildings emits a dangerously large amount of particulate matter, which can cause respiratory problems, heart attacks and even death. The study estimates that more than 150 deaths could be avoided each year if the city’s buildings burned cleaner fuel.

Almost everyone agrees that legislative climate action is preferred over regulation—it is the simpler, more democratic and longer lasting way to bring down our carbon emissions. But the congressional process has stalled out and Senator Murkowski’s attempt to shut down EPA’s ability to regulate is not helping. Procedurally, a disapproval resolution is destined to fail—at best it is a waste of time, but more likely a political move designed to slow down progress on climate legislation.

What’s behind that black smoke pouring out of many city buildings? From the NYU Institute for Policy Integrity, Executive Director Michael Livermore and fellow Jason Schwartz discuss their recent study of the effects of oil boilers on the city’s air, and the larger efforts being made to clean up air pollution in the area.

Switching from cheap and dirty #6 fuel oil to cleaner #2 oil would save up to 56 lives a year, and switching to natural gas would save up to 188 people, according to scientific models from New York University Law School’s Institute for Policy Integrity.

“Without net neutrality rules, new technologies could lead to pricing practices that transfer wealth from content providers to ISPs,” warns the Institute for Policy Integrity, “a form of price discrimination that would reduce the return on investment for Internet content—meaning website owners, bloggers, newspapers, and businesses would have less incentive to expand their sites and applications.”

The question of how seriously we should worry about the most severe effects of global warming depends on what we are willing to pay to avoid serious harm to our children and grandchildren.

Jason Schwartz, a Legal Fellow at the Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University School, said “the EPA doesn’t have a slam-dunk case.”

“Neither the absurd-results canon nor the doctrine of administrative necessity will allow the EPA to create exemptions to those requirements,” Schwartz and his Institute for Policy Integrity colleague, Inimai Chettiar, wrote in an April policy article.

One potentially saving argument, Schwartz says, is the EPA’s plan to phase in different threshold-level emitters, allowing five years to study streamlining the permitting process for facilities under the 25,000 level. The courts may defer to the agency’s action on that account.

While the head of the Environmental Protection Agency Lisa Jackson has said she’s focused on regulating light-duty vehicle emissions and the largest stationary sources, petitions already filed with the EPA may force much more stringent action, experts say.

“The EPA will be locked into a path that ends in the regulation of most mobile sources,” including airplanes, trucks and trains or the fuels that run them, says Jason Schwartz and Inimai Chettiar, Legal Fellows at the Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University School.

On December 22nd, 2008, a quiet evening in the town of Harriman, Tennessee was interrupted when 1.2 billion gallons of toxic coal ash sludge burst out of a nearby landfill, poisoning the land and water in its path and causing untold hardship for families whose lives were turned upside down. A year later, the underlying cause of this massive environmental disaster is still unregulated.