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Matt Shudtz | May 27, 2010

EPA Announces New Policy on CBI in Health and Safety Studies

EPA today announced (pdf) that it will begin a general practice of reviewing – and likely rejecting – confidentiality claims regarding chemical identities and supporting data in health and safety studies submitted to the agency under TSCA.  The news is long overdue, but very welcome. One of Congress’s primary goals in drafting TSCA was to create […]

Alejandro Camacho | May 27, 2010

Why Federal Climate Change Legislation Shouldn’t Stop States From Innovating in Adaptation Efforts

Even if a climate change bill like Kerry-Lieberman were to become law, the effects of climate change will still be dramatic, making adaptation a crucial complement to mitigation activities for addressing climate change. As specialists on local conditions with the capacity to innovate at a smaller scale, state and local authorities need to retain the authority […]

Frank Ackerman | May 26, 2010

Socializing Risk: The New Energy Economics

Cross-posted from Triple Crisis. Despite talk of a moratorium, the Interior Department’s Minerals and Management Service is still granting waivers from environmental review for oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, including wells in very deep water. Until last month, most of us never thought about the risk that one of those huge offshore rigs […]

Joel A. Mintz | May 25, 2010

Assessing the Federal Response to the Deepwater Horizon Catastrophe

The recent horrific events in the Gulf of Mexico have presented immense challenges to the Obama administration and many of the federal career officials who are responsible for regulating the safety of offshore oil extraction and responding to spills like the one that continues to gush from the remains of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig […]

Victor Flatt | May 21, 2010

Don’t Blame Tony Hayward: Why We Need Laws and Regulations That Specifically Hold Parties Liable for the Harm They Cause

BP CEO Tony Hayward has been careful to say his company will pay for the "clean-up" from the oil spill — meaning, not the damages. But if past disasters are any guide, the clean-up will be just a small fraction of the damages from the spill (the deaths, the damage of the oil to natural […]

Ben Somberg | May 20, 2010

Doremus in LAT: Administration’s Response to BP Oil Spill Needs to Go Beyond Splitting MMS

CPR Member Scholar Holly Doremus and fellow UC Berkeley School of Law Professor Eric Biber have penned an op-ed in today’s LA Times arguing that the Administration’s plan to split the Minerals Management Service in two in response to the BP oil spill disaster falls short of what’s needed. Write Doremus and Biber: The political […]

Dan Rohlf | May 19, 2010

What if MMS Had Followed the Law When Considering the Deepwater Horizon Permit?

As millions of gallons of oil continue to pour into the Gulf of Mexico, the Washington Post and New York Times reported that the Minerals Management Service (MMS) – the agency within the U.S. Department of Interior that oversees offshore oil and gas leasing and development – mostly ignored some of the country’s most important […]

Matt Shudtz | May 17, 2010

Potentially Regulated Parties, White House Trying to Inject the Data Quality Act and Other Distractions Into EPA’s IRIS Assessment Process

In the year since EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson announced a new process (pdf) for updating chemical risk assessments in EPA’s IRIS database, agency scientists have succeeded in getting some stalled assessments moving through the system. Since the May 21, 2009 announcement, EPA staff have competed nine new and updated assessments. Two others are in the final stages […]

Alejandro Camacho | May 14, 2010

On Adaptation, Kerry-Lieberman Climate Bill Largely Similar to ACES, But Drops Several Provisions and Provides Less Money

Though in many respects similar to provisions in the House-approved American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES) bill and the prior Boxer-Kerry bill in the Senate, the adaptation program proposed in the newly released Kerry-Lieberman American Power Act substantially decreases funding for federal and state adaptation programs and eliminates provisions establishing a public health adaptation […]