Cross-posted from Legal Planet.
Yesterday, Berkeley Law’s Center for Law, Energy, and the Environment hosted a public presentation by EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson. She delivered brief prepared remarks, then took a lot of questions. She didn’t announce any new policy initiatives, but she did make it clear that she (and the President) are not going to cave to pressure from Republicans in the House.
Jackson did seem glad to be well outside the Beltway for a while, and who can blame her? She noted that the House has taken some 170 anti-environmental votes this term, more than one for every day it has been in session. And she’s been called in for a number of grillings. Although she faced some difficult questions in Berkeley, she noted that at least Dan Farber, who moderated the questions, didn’t frame each of them as a five-minute tirade against the EPA, and that she was actually given time to respond. She didn’t shy away from any of the questions, which covered the gamut from the delay in issuing new ozone regulations to EPA’s role in the Keystone Pipeline decision to regulation of concentrated animal feeding operations and of toxic chemicals.
This is the first time I’ve seen Jackson speak in person. I was very impressed, with two things standing out for me. First, she truly does seem optimistic despite facing a hostile Congress and challenging (to put it mildly) budget times. She’s clearly both tough and resilient. Second, she has absolute command of what’s going on in her agency, not just on the regulatory side but also at the research labs, and also of the network of interrelated initiatives at other agencies. Whether you agree with EPA’s decisions under her watch or not (and probably most of us, wherever we stand on the political spectrum, can find something to disagree with), you have to respect Administrator Jackson and her approach to her job. She’s the kind of public servant I’d like to see more of in Washington.
Video of the session should be available on the CLEE website soon.
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Holly Doremus | November 4, 2011
Cross-posted from Legal Planet. Yesterday, Berkeley Law’s Center for Law, Energy, and the Environment hosted a public presentation by EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson. She delivered brief prepared remarks, then took a lot of questions. She didn’t announce any new policy initiatives, but she did make it clear that she (and the President) are not going […]
William Funk | November 4, 2011
On November 9th the Supreme Court will hear oral argument in National Meat Association v. Harris, wading once again into the mire of federal preemption. The National Meat case involves a California statute that prohibits the slaughter of non-ambulatory animals for human consumption and requires that non-ambulatory animals be immediately and humanely euthanized. A federal law, the […]
Ben Somberg | November 1, 2011
If I didn’t know better, I’d think Blanche Lincoln was trying to fool us. The former Senator currently heads the National Federation of Independent Business’s anti-regulatory campaign, and is in DC today to push for a freeze on new regulations. For her accompanying op-ed in Politico, how would she make the case that regulations are […]
Catherine O'Neill | October 28, 2011
As EPA’s long-awaited rule curbing mercury emissions from coal-fired power plants heads to OMB for its review, new scientific studies suggest that the harms of mercury contamination may be more severe and more widespread than previously understood. According to the report Great Lakes Mercury Connections: The Extent and Effects of Mercury Pollution in the Great Lakes Region, […]
Frank Ackerman | October 27, 2011
Cross-posted from ThinkProgress Green. Rep. Ralph Hall (R-TX) has asked the Energy Information Administration to evaluate an unrealistically harsh and unsophisticated clean energy standard, designed to represent the Republicans’ worst nightmare: every electricity retailer in the country (some of them quite small) must meet a relatively high and rising standard for low-carbon energy, starting very […]
Daniel Farber | October 26, 2011
Cross-posted from Legal Planet. Of course, not everyone agrees that CBA is good in the first place. It remains anathema to many environmentalists. My own view is that it can be a useful tool so long as its limitations are clearly understood. But just because something is good doesn’t mean that more is better. My […]
Ben Somberg | October 25, 2011
If you were an industry lobbyist working to block new health and safety protections, what would make your job easier? How about if the law said that you could flood an agency with alternate regulatory proposals, and the agency wouldn’t just need to consider each one, but in fact conduct a full cost-benefit analysis on […]
Yee Huang | October 21, 2011
Maryland has a long-held reputation as a regional and national leader in environmental protection. But in some areas, especially enforcement, that reputation warrants scrutiny, says a CPR briefing paper released today. For example, the Maryland Department of the Environment (MDE) cannot by law assess fees for issuing and administering permits for municipalities for water pollution, […]
Yee Huang | October 20, 2011
It’s no secret that past efforts to restore the Chesapeake Bay have suffered from a lack of accountability. And so as the EPA, the Chesapeake Bay states, and the District of Columbia engage in their current effort to restore the health and water quality of the Bay, getting accountability right is extremely important. This theme […]