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Showing 2,810 results

Rena Steinzor | March 2, 2012

CPR Issue Alert: Administration’s Failure to Adopt Needed Safeguards in a Timely Way is Costing Lives and Money

The toll:  An estimated 6,500 to 17,967 premature deaths, 9,867 non-fatal heart attacks, 3,947 cases of chronic bronchitis, and more than 2.3 million lost work and school days. That’s just a partial tally of the costs Americans will bear because of unjustified delays in two critical health and safety regulations.  More broadly, the Administration’s Fall […]

Sidney A. Shapiro | February 28, 2012

What Does It Mean that the Public Overwhelmingly Supports Specific Types of Regulation, But Questions ‘Regulation’ in General?

A new Pew public opinion poll published last week shows substantial public support for specific types of regulation, but skepticism about regulation in general. While 70-89% of the public would either expand or keep current levels of five specific types of regulation, 52% say government regulation of business usually does more harm than good as […]

David Hunter | February 27, 2012

Extending Protection to Wildlife: Why the United States Should Ratify the Agreement on the Conservation of Albatrosses and Petrels

a(broad) perspective Today’s post is first in a series on a recent CPR white paper, Reclaiming Global Environmental Leadership: Why the United States Should Ratify Ten Pending Environmental Treaties.  Each month, this series will discuss one of these ten treaties.  Agreement on the Conservation of Albatrosses and Petrels Adopted and Opened for Signature on June […]

| February 23, 2012

Can Corporations Violate Human Rights? In Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum, the Supreme Court May Say Yes … or No

On February 28, the Supreme Court will hear argument in Kiobel v Royal Dutch Petroleum, a case with far-reaching implications for efforts to hold corporations accountable when they commit or are complicit in abuses of human rights.  For over fifty years, Shell has extracted oil from Nigeria, causing great harm to the environment and people […]

Rena Steinzor | February 22, 2012

The Age of Greed: What the Chemical Industry Doesn’t Want You to Know

Imagine for a moment that you’rethe chief executive of a company that manufactures chemicals used in plastics that become consumer products, especially plastic picnic ware.  The head of your product development lab reports that she has just gotten some troubling results regarding one of your biggest sellers—a chemical agent that makes it possible for plastic […]

Robert Verchick | February 22, 2012

Mardi Gras, Check. BP ‘Trial of the Century’ Here We Come.

  Mardi Gras Float, 2011 Well, another magnificent Mardi Gras has ended, and at this point, I’d normally be slouched on the sofa sipping a tomato juice (neat) and sorting beads. But not this year.  That’s because next week, squadrons of lawyers, journalists, petroleum engineers, and fisher folk are scheduled to descend on New Orleans, […]

Kirsten Engel | February 21, 2012

EPA’s Standing Argument: A Sleeping Giant in the Tailoring Rule Litigation?

On Feb. 28 and 29, the D.C. Circuit is scheduled to hear arguments on a suite of industry-led challenges to EPA-issued greenhouse gas rules.  While attention has focused on industry’s challenge to EPA’s finding that greenhouse gases (GHGs) endanger the environment, industry’s challenge to the greenhouse gas permitting “tailoring” rule – a rule limiting the […]

Daniel Farber | February 20, 2012

Placing a Ceiling on Protection for Public Health

Cross-posted from Legal Planet. Governor Romney has endorsed an idea called regulatory budgeting, but it really means capping protection for public health. Romney’s position paper explains the concept as follows: To force agencies to limit the costs they are imposing on society, and to provide the certainty that businesses crave, a system of regulatory caps […]

Matt Shudtz | February 17, 2012

EPA Releases IRIS Assessment of Dioxin Non-Cancer Risks

Today EPA released the first part of its long-awaited reassessment of the human health risks posed by 2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin, a chemical considered to be the most toxic of the dioxin compounds and the stuff that made Agent Orange so bad for its victims.  It’s bittersweet news: on the one hand, the decades-long stretch between EPA’s first […]