In the News

No longer a risk of the distant future, a failure to tackle climate-change risk could cost the world $1.7 trillion a year by 2025—according to a report released in March by New York University Law School’s Institute for Policy Integrity. In what its authors believe to be “the largest-ever expert survey of the economics of climate change,” the “overwhelming consensus” among the 738 economists canvassed concludes that inaction will be costlier than action, and that “immediate, aggressive emissions reductions are economically desirable.”

Justin Gundlach noted that in its climate lawsuit against Big Oil, the city pointed out that “the number of days in New York City with rainfall at or above two inches is projected to increase by as much as 67% by the 2020s and the number of days with rainfall at or above four inches is projected to increase by as much as 67% by the 2020s and 133% by the 2080s.”

Max Sarinsky, a senior attorney for the left-leaning Institute for Policy Integrity at NYU School of Law, said he hoped states like Pennsylvania – which control most drilling regulations and tend to be friendlier to it than the federal government – will follow the Biden administration's example of curtailing fossil fuel development while ramping up renewable energy production.

Republican governors across the United States have enacted legislation that will likely fuel the spread of COVID. A new op-ed published by legal expert Richard Revesz examines the governors' failure to properly mitigate the spread of COVID and their misunderstanding of federalism.

Though the report is likely to be cited often in litigation, its biggest imprint will be on establishing a social cost of carbon, said Richard Revesz, a law professor and director of the Institute for Policy Integrity at NYU. “That’s the building block used to justify the stringency of regulation across many, many agencies,” he said.

With one stroke of the pen, the FTC can compel hotels to disclose all-in pricing from the moment in which a consumer searches for rates and eliminate “drip pricing.” In a well-argued column in the New York Times, Max Sarinsky argues why this matters to consumers and businesses.

In a petition to the FTC, Brian Canfield, Jack Lienke, Matthew Peterson and Max Sarinsky of the Institute for Policy Integrity argue that drip pricing serves no legitimate business purpose and harms consumers, and so should be outlawed by the FTC.

The Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University School of Law petitioned the Federal Trade Commission to request that the regulator ban so-called “drip pricing” practices. Should the FTC agree, such rules would have a dramatic impact on ticket marketplaces, as such “drip prices” are common on both primary and secondary ticketing systems.

“The transition away from relying on fossil gas in buildings will involve intermediate solutions. But some solutions carry fewer physical risks and are easier to eventually cast aside than others,” said Justin Gundlach, a senior attorney at the Institute for Policy Integrity at NYU School of Law.

If the international community does not step up to combat climate change, it is likely to do $1.7 trillion a year in damage by 2025, increasing to about $30 trillion a year by 2075, according to a report by the Institute for Policy Integrity.