In a statement Wednesday responding to President-elect Trump’s choice of climate change denier Scott Pruitt to lead the Environmental Protection Agency, CPR President Robert Verchick said that the choice was “a clear indication that the administration plans a full-throated assault on environmental protections.”
In an op-ed in The New York Times this morning, CPR Member Scholar William Buzbee describes some of the challenges Pruitt and Trump will face as they undertake that regressive effort to unravel the fabric of rules and regulations protecting the environment. Trump has threatened a wholesale rollback of environmental protections, but Buzbee warns that:
Regulatory reversals lacking a legal or factual basis would result in lawsuits by citizens, states and industries supporting the regulations. Challengers would argue that the rules are rooted in statutory language, court precedents and in careful documentation of environmental, technological and market facts. On the climate, for example, three Supreme Court decisions established that federal climate action is required by the Clean Air Act’s broad language; and the E.P.A. then, via another rule upheld by the judiciary, documented substantial climate risks….
Mr. Pruitt and the incoming Trump administration cannot simply rely on their preferences or on baseless claims about science and markets. Decades of law, much of it created by conservatives’ judicial heroes, require presidents and agencies to abide by the rule of law and justify regulatory reversals. They have to take a hard look at science and other underlying facts.
You can read the full article here.
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Matthew Freeman | December 9, 2016
In a statement Wednesday responding to President-elect Trump’s choice of climate change denier Scott Pruitt to lead the Environmental Protection Agency, CPR President Robert Verchick said that the choice was “a clear indication that the administration plans a full-throated assault on environmental protections.” In an op-ed in The New York Times this morning, CPR Member […]
Evan Isaacson | December 8, 2016
Over the last couple of months, a pair of actions taken by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) demonstrate the glacial pace of federal stormwater management policy under the Clean Water Act. In October, EPA rejected a series of petitions by a group of environmental organizations to expand regulatory protections for certain urban waterways. Then […]
Alice Kaswan | December 5, 2016
Environmentalists are understandably wringing their hands over the likely post-election demise of the Clean Power Plan, the Obama administration’s rule to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from power plants, which are the nation’s single biggest source of carbon emissions. But, with or without the Clean Power Plan (the Plan), the states hold the cards to a […]
James Goodwin | November 30, 2016
Many Americans would likely be shocked to learn how lax government oversight of the manufacture and design of aircraft, such as airplanes and helicopters, has become. After all, any list of those areas of the economy that would seem to cry out for strict regulation would have to include aircraft production and maintenance, considering that […]
James Goodwin | November 29, 2016
What does Steve Bannon – who, despite his well-documented racism, anti-Semitism, and misogyny, was appointed as president-elect Trump’s senior counselor and White House strategist – have to do with a rarified and wonky policy exercise such as regulatory cost-benefit analysis? Unfortunately, a lot, as it turns out. From a serious policy perspective, the Trump administration’s […]
Matthew Freeman | November 29, 2016
Ever since Richard Nixon’s vice president, Maryland’s own Spiro Agnew, described the nation’s ink-stained journalists as “nattering nabobs of negativism,” attacks on the media have been reliably base-pleasing material for conservative politicians. But Donald Trump is in a category all his own. For most pols, attacking the press is a way to deflect criticism. For […]
Thomas McGarity | November 22, 2016
We are about to experience a fifth major assault on the health, safety, environmental, and consumer protections that Congress put in place during the 1960s and 1970s, protections that most of us take for granted. And all indications are that this assault will be more intense and more comprehensive than any of the prior assaults […]
Dave Owen | November 21, 2016
Editor’s note: This post was originally published on Environmental Law Prof Blog on November 10. While it was primarily written for environmental law students, it contains wisdom for everyone who cares about our environment and our natural heritage. * * * “As a future environmental attorney, I’m confused and angry and sad. And as a human being, […]
Matt Shudtz | November 21, 2016
Hazy as they may be, we are all looking into our crystal balls, trying to envision what a Donald Trump presidency will mean for the world around us. The first glimpses we have of the future – Steve Bannon at Trump’s right hand, Jeff Sessions as Attorney General, Michael Flynn as National Security Advisor – […]