In the News

Late last week, a federal court knocked down plans to expand coal mining in the Western US. The ruling fits a pattern of federal courts pushing back against agencies that are trying to gloss over their statutory climate change obligations. “We are more used to seeing decisions like this from the Ninth Circuit, which has been a leader on requiring accounting for climate change. It’s a sign that courts are recognizing the importance of this,” said Jayni Hein, policy director at the Institute for Policy Integrity at the New York University School of Law.

A major court decision dressing down the federal government for “irrational” consideration of the climate impacts of coal leasing stands to reverberate throughout the Trump administration. “This opinion is significant because it means that future federal agencies cannot just rest on these questionable assumptions and will have to do meaningful analysis as to the actual greenhouse gas emission effects from their leasing decisions,” said Jayni Hein, policy director at the Institute for Policy Integrity. “They can’t just conclude that there’s no net effect.”

The editorial board’s false alarm that coal plants will “starve” unless two Colorado mines expand into “pristine” forest deeply misunderstands the coal market, Economics 101, and climate change.

The Trump administration has diagnosed a legitimate problem with distorted energy markets, but an honest attempt to stop picking winners would require eliminating all subsidies, many of which favor coal.

“It’s uncharted territory for a president to attempt to completely lift a moratorium like the one President Obama instituted,” says Jayni Hein, policy director at New York University’s Institute for Policy Integrity. Past presidents have tweaked the size of previously designated protected areas, she says, but a full-on repeal is unprecedented and would likely end up in the courts.

Now there’s a window of opportunity for coal companies. Lifting the moratorium, says Jayni Foley Hein of the Institute for Policy Integrity, “will allow new lease sales to go forward using the same outdated minimum bids, rental rates, and stagnant royalty rates that have been used for decades.”

Richard Revesz, the director of the Institute for Policy Integrity, a nonpartisan think tank at the New York University School of Law dedicated to improving the quality of government decision-making, told ABC News by email that the order will ultimately hurt the economy. “There is no consistent evidence that regulations contribute to long-term changes in the unemployment rate, and rolling back regulations will not create jobs,” he said.

The federal coal program is a quintessential bad deal for Americans. President-elect Donald Trump campaigned on a promise to end similar bad deals; his administration shouldn’t discard ongoing reform efforts that could add billions to the federal treasury and energy-producing states.

The situation in Standing Rock shows the difficulty of fighting for a right to use land in a way that does not yield short-term profits. “By using economics to show just how wasteful under-regulation can be,” Richard Revesz wrote in 2008, “cost-benefit environmentalism can be the key to creating the political coalition necessary to make America richer by regulating more wisely.”

Jayni Hein, policy director at the Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University School of Law, praised the OSMRE’s move. “This guidance could help protect taxpayers, as well as land and water resources,” Hein said in a statement.