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“The rollback of the vehicle emissions standards is based on analysis that is shoddy even by the shockingly unprofessional standards of Trump-era deregulation,” said Richard Revesz of the Institute for Policy Integrity and dean emeritus at New York University School of Law.

When the civil servants were directed to undo Obama’s Clean Power Plan and create a more coal-friendly version, some of those who remained at the EPA made sure the documents accompanying the proposed replacement included the fact that increased coal pollution would cause 1,400 new premature deaths a year. The EPA later deleted the number from the final rule, but Richard Revesz, an expert on environmental law at New York University, said it would still play a role in the legal fight against the rollback. “That number was a devastatingly bad conclusion for the administration,” he said.

With an election looming, the urgency of completing regulations is real. Under the Congressional Review Act, Congress can overturn a regulation or federal rule within 60 days of it being finalized. If Democrats win control of the White House and Senate in November, and keep control of the House, any rule completed after late May or early June would be vulnerable. “The administration understands the electoral map has turned against it,” said Richard Revesz, a professor of environmental law at New York University.

An efficient approach would be to pass one bill aimed at enacting the "Green New Deal," because it could go after multiple sectors at once, said Derek Sylvan, strategy director at New York University School of Law's Institute for Policy Integrity.

Such a bill would have clear goals and pathways to meet targets, which could then be put into place through regulatory approaches, he said.

One potential model might be America's Water Infrastructure Act of 2018, S. 3021, which sought to incorporate local input into projects and safeguards to make sure state infrastructure spending meets specific criteria, Sylvan said.

According to Derek Sylvan, strategy director for the Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University's School of Law, the executive order "creates a new, irrational way" of evaluating all past and present regulations. "Every regulation will be judged on its costs alone, ignoring the benefits it was designed to create," he says. "If we scrap a regulation that imposes $10 of costs on industry in exchange for $500 of avoided hospital visits, we haven't "saved" society $10; we've thrown away $490. But this order would ignore the $500 in benefits."

Last year, the New York–based Institute for Policy Integrity tried to remedy that situation with just such a large-scale survey of economists who have published work on climate change.

When it comes to climate change, there’s broad consensus among economists that the potential economic impacts will be serious, widespread and more severe than previous estimates have indicated. At least, this is the conclusion of a new survey, published Monday by the New York University School of Law’s Institute for Policy Integrity — and experts say we should be listening to their warnings.