In the News

Long-term efforts to create ‘green’ jobs and infrastructure will not succeed without a real price on greenhouse gas emissions, a New York University think tank charges in a new report. President-elect Barack Obama has proposed a mandatory, economywide emissions cap to cut carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases 80 percent by 2050. The policy would auction pollution credits to electric utilities and other major emitters to meet the cap.

Following a pattern set in previous transitions, the Bush administration is approving controversial new regulations that would affect federal laws governing the environment, reproductive health, and the workplace, among others. The timing of the approvals would make it harder for the incoming administration to undo these regulations.

I was on a conference call earlier this week focused on cap-and-dividend. (You can download the MP3.)

C&D, if you don’t recall, is a kind of hybrid cap-and-trade/carbon tax developed by Peter Barnes. A fee would be levied on fossil fuels; the revenue would be refunded to citizens on an equal per capita basis. (Imagine the Alaska Permanent Fund on a much larger scale.)

According to Michael A. Livermore, Executive Director of the Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University School of Law, the list of proposed 11th hour action by the Bush White House include expanding mountaintop mining.

On Tuesday the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Entergy v. EPA, a case that pits environmentalists seeking strong clean water protections against industry and the federal Environmental Protection Agency. But beyond the basic facts of the case is the bigger issue of how to use cost-benefit analysis when setting environmental policy.

Were you holding your breath until November 20, too? Well, the big day came and went – and no word from the Department of Health and Human Service on their new, expanded ‘provider conscience’ regulations. Advocates widely speculated that the new rule – which has been denounced by women’s health groups.

Detroit is in a free fall. Some say it’s their own doing by deciding to push big gas guzzlers rather fuel efficient cars. With that choice, the Big Three maximized their short-term profits but conceded the auto market of the future to foreign companies. There is plenty of blame to pass around. Executives made exceedingly poor investment decisions. Union officials were blinded by the good times and failed to protect their members’ future. An army of lobbyists was hired to protect the industry from tighter laws.

In the past few months, we’ve seen President Bush propose a number of controversial midnight regulations. He’s suggested expanding mountaintop mining, allowing tons of rubble and refuse to be dumped into streams and valleys. He’s threatened to significantly weaken Endangered Species Act regulations. He has proposed rules that would allow increased pollution from old power plants. But none of these deregulations have been finalized yet.

In September, the Institute for [Policy Integrity] at the New York University School of Law wrote the White House to complain that at least three new rules violated the Bolten decree against what the institute called “last-minute” policymaking.

Environmentalists and public-policy watchdogs are expecting similar industry-friendly regulatory changes in the coming months. Such “midnight regulations” have become common practice in recent decades as presidents, both Republican and Democrat, seek to leave their mark on public policy.