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Last week, The Washington Post ran a story about regulation, headlined, “Regulators surge in numbers while overseers shrink.” The story came from Bloomberg and was written by reporter Andrew Zajac. The headline captures the thrust of the piece. Zajac writes: As the U.S. government’s regulatory bureaucracy has ballooned, one agency has been left behind: the […]

Although the Supreme Court upheld the Affordable Care Act’s requirement that most individuals purchase health insurance (called the individual mandate) as within Congress’ power to levy taxes, it stated that Congress lacked the power to enact it under the Commerce Clause.  Under prior case law, Congress could regulate activities substantially affecting interstate commerce by any […]

Good news for the Arctic! “I believe there will not be an oil spill”—this according to Ken Salazar, the nation’s Secretary of Interior and, now, environmental crystal-gazer. As someone still fretting about BP’s mess in the Gulf, I want to believe; but it’s hard. So let me back up. Earlier this week, Secretary Salazar said […]

Member Scholar Noah Sachs and Policy Analyst Aimee Simpson have sent a letter to the EPA nominating the chemical Bisphenol A (BPA) to be included on the “Fourth Contaminant Candidate List” for possible regulation. They write: Pursuant to the Safe Drinking Water Act Amendments of 1996 (SDWA), the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) must compile […]

The EPA has quietly missed another deadline on issuing the final revised “boiler MACT” rule. The agency had pledged for many months that the rule would be finalized in April. Then, in an April 30th “status report” filing with the DC Circuit Court of Appeals, the agency said: “EPA intends to take final action on this […]

a(broad) perspective Today’s post is the fifth 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.  Previous posts are here. 1996 Protocol to the London Convention on the Prevention of […]

This is not your father’s Earth Summit.  This week’s UN Conference on Sustainable Development is meant to assess how far we’ve come from the 1992 UN Conference on Environment and Development (ambitiously named the Earth Summit).  And the 1992 Earth Summit was ambitious, featuring the largest gathering of world leaders in history as well as […]

Today, the EPA announced its new proposed National Ambient Air Quality Standard (NAAQS) for fine particulate matter, commonly referred to as soot.   Soot is one of the most common air pollutants that Americans encounter, and it is extremely harmful to our health and the environment, contributing to premature death, heart attacks, and chronic lung disease. […]

CPR President Rena Steinzor and Senior Policy Analyst Matthew Shudtz sent a letter to EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson this morning concerning the EPA’s Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS). From the letter: We are concerned that the recent establishment of the SAB Chemical Assessment Advisory Committee (CAAC) institutionalizes yet another opportunity for potentially regulated parties to […]