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Throughout his time in office, President Donald J. Trump has boasted about cutting regulations. His antagonism to environmental regulation has been particularly virulent and incessant. By one count, Trump Administration agencies have initiated or completed 100 environmental rollbacks. By thwarting often bipartisan legislative environmental protection goals adopted over the course of 50 years, President Trump's actions create serious threats to public health and environmental integrity. The Administration's suppression of public participation in regulatory decision-making has also undercut the ability of people and communities harmed by the Administration's deregulatory frenzy to protect themselves. These anti-environmental and anti-democratic practices converged in the Administration's recent revisions to the Council on Environmental Quality's (CEQ) regulations implementing the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA).

This week, CPR is launching its Beyond 12866 initiative, an online platform focused on promoting a progressive vision for rebuilding the U.S. regulatory system. Such a regulatory system will be essential not only to achieving the progressive vision of a more just and equitable society; it will also do the heavy practical lifting needed for implementing key elements of a progressive policy agenda, such as the Green New Deal, Medicare for All, and Black Lives Matter movement.

The response to the COVID-19 pandemic has driven home some lessons about governance. Those lessons have broader application -- for instance, to climate governance. We can't afford for the federal government to flunk Crisis Management 101 again.

Environmental justice problems require a willingness to acknowledge privilege and adopt a more inclusive approach. I hope this post might prompt you to reflect, read, and start an uncomfortable conversation or two. We face existential environmental threats almost everywhere around the world, and we won’t succeed in combating them unless we’re all fighting together, for a healthy environment that everyone can enjoy.

Regulatory agencies do not appear to be permeated by overt racism, but structural or institutional racism exists if bias is built into existing institutions. We tend to think of administrative procedures as being neutral between competing points of view, but as the environmental justice movement (EJ) keeps reminding us, this is not necessarily so. It is no secret, for example, that the rulemaking process is dominated by corporate interests, and the same is true of the lobbying that occurs at agencies. Environmental and other public interest groups are hard pressed to match this advocacy. Less noticed is that the fact that there is little or no participation by marginalized communities in rulemaking, although as the pandemic has taught us, our most disadvantaged citizens are the ones that bear the brunt of inadequate government protections. Efforts to reach out and speak to such communities are simply not a regular part of rulemaking practice. True, there is no legal barrier to such participation, but there are considerable structural and economic barriers, which we simply overlook. The administrative process can be more inclusive, and it is time, past time really, to have a discussion how to make it so.

On October 20, 1994, rising floodwaters from the San Jacinto River in Houston, Texas, caused a pipeline to break open, allowing gasoline to gush out and the river to catch fire. Such flooding is increasingly likely as the effects of climate change take hold, and yet, in the quarter century since that disaster, the federal government has implemented no new regulations to ensure that oil and gas operators are adequately preparing for the risks from more frequent and intense floods caused by the climate crisis.

Yesterday, I joined a group of CPR Member Scholars and staff in submitting comments on the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) "benefits-busting" proposal, which would drastically overhaul how the agency performs cost-benefit analysis on its biggest Clean Air Act rules. As we explain in our comments, the action is a thinly veiled effort to rig the results of those analyses – more so than they already are – to make it harder to issue appropriately strong safeguards, thereby sabotaging the effective and timely implementation of the Clean Air Act.

Based on its current projected path, Tropical Storm Isaias could bring heavy rains up and down the East Coast, from the Carolinas and Virginia to the Delmarva Peninsula, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey. Along the way, the storm could swamp industrial facilities, coal ash ponds, concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs), and more. From Hurricane Florence to Hurricane Harvey and beyond, in the past 15 years, we've seen numerous tropical storms flood unprepared facilities. This has caused significant infrastructure damage and unleashed toxic floodwaters into nearby communities and waterways, threatening public health and making residents sick.

The nation is finally beginning to grapple with the widespread disparities in public health, economic opportunity, and community well-being across race and class that stem from longstanding systems of oppression and injustice. As systems thinkers, CPR's Board, staff, and Member Scholars have devoted considerable time to researching and understanding the roots of these inequities, considering the disproportionate impacts on frontline communities, and advocating for just policy reform.