In the News

Last month, I explained that EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt’s handling of the case would test the sincerity of his recent pledges to prioritize air quality, even as he works to unwind EPA restrictions on greenhouse gas emissions. Well, test day arrived, and Pruitt failed miserably. It seems that the new administrator’s only real priority is rolling back regulatory protections, regardless of which type of pollution they address.

Mere hours after the signing ceremony for Trump’s executive order, EPA filed a motion in the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, asking the court to put a pending case about the Clean Power Plan on indefinite hold. The court should say no.

Pruitt’s right that ozone is a serious problem. But he failed to mention that the EPA already issued a major new limit on ozone pollution back in 2015, when Pruitt was still serving as Oklahoma’s attorney general. Pruitt also left out the part where, rather than praising that new ozone rule, he sued to block it.

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.

Over the course of the D.C. Circuit hearing, the Clean Power Plan’s opponents made several legal and factual assertions that don’t stand up to scrutiny. Our research helps set the record straight.

You probably thought that last week’s only notable debate was the one between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump at Hofstra University, but, on Tuesday, supporters and opponents of EPA’s Clean Power Plan had a high-stakes showdown of their own in Washington, D.C.: a seven-hour oral argument before the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. The proceedings may not have spawned an SNL sketch, but in the wonky world of environmental law, they were a very big deal.

New York State’s new Clean Energy Standard (CES) has drawn plenty of attention for trying to prop up otherwise-faltering nuclear plants. But what it’s actually doing is far more significant. The CES, recently approved by the New York Public Service Commission, aims to help meet the state’s goals of using renewable energy sources for half its electricity by 2030 and reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent by 2050. To help get there, the CES lays out one of the country’s first clean energy plans that relies on sound economic valuation of generators’ clean energy attributes. This isn’t a nuclear plant bailout; it’s an embrace of economic principles.

Any economist will tell you that disagreement is a hallmark of the discipline, but we found a surprisingly high degree of consensus on many critical topics. According to the economists who’ve studied these issues, the economic case for strong, near-term U.S. climate action is compelling

President Obama’s Clean Power Plan has rightly been hailed as the most important action any president has taken to address the climate crisis.

Fires continue to rage in many parts of the country, threatening hundreds of homes, creating emergencies in National Parks and residential areas, and straining government budgets — Washington State’s wildfire season is already six times more damaging than average. And we may be in for much worse in the near future if climate change is not contained.