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Today marks the one-year anniversary of President Obama’s Executive Order on Chesapeake Bay Restoration and Protection, which commits federal agencies to a new leadership role in Bay restoration. This morning the Federal Leadership Committee, headed by EPA and comprised of many of the major federal agencies, released its final Strategy for Restoration and Protection of […]

While Kerry and Lieberman (and before two weeks ago, Graham) have tried to pitch the proposed new Senate climate and energy draft legislation as a “game-changer” the truth is that, aside from the stronger preemption language limiting the states, its effect is not terribly different from what has come before. Sure, there are sweeteners for the […]

The Kerry-Lieberman bill’s provisions on offsets are largely similar to those in the Waxman-Markey and Kerry-Boxer bill, but include a number of changes that make more specific policy choices in the use of offsets. First, the proposal enumerates a specific lengthy list of eligible offset categories (whereas Waxman-Markey didn’t list specific categories, instead giving instruction […]

A federal task force of the EPA and a host of federal agencies are  currently working on a proposal, due to President Obama by June, on carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) policy; they’re now holding a series of public meetings (for background on CCS generally, see the CPR Perspective I wrote examining some of the arguments […]

Cross-posted from Legal Planet. As oil drifts on and offshore in the Gulf of Mexico, forcing the closure of wildlife refuges and more fishing grounds, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar has called a temporarily halt to new offshore drilling while his staff prepare a report on the disaster and even Republicans in Congress are calling for […]

CPR Member Scholar Victor Flatt has an op-ed piece in this morning’s Houston Chronicle, in which he argues that the week of April 20 will likely be recalled as “one of the most pivotal and important weeks in the history of energy in this country,” citing the confluence of the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon […]

Our loyal opposition at the Center for Regulatory Effectiveness has engaged in some very creative reading of legal opinions in order to breathe new life into a discredited anti-regulatory tool of the George W. Bush era: the Information Quality Act. This pesky little statute instructs the Office of Management and Budget to “provide policy and procedural […]

Today the Center for Progressive Reform releases a briefing paper on Chesapeake Bay policy in anticipation of the one-year anniversary of President Obama’s Executive Order on Chesapeake Bay Protection and Restoration. The Choose Clean Water Coalition also today sent a letter to EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson stressing that EPA’s strategy for the Bay must have […]

This post is written by CPR President Rena Steinzor and CPR Policy Analyst James Goodwin. President Obama appointed Lisa Jackson to head the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on December 15, 2008. Confirmed by the Senate on January 22, 2009, she is a Cabinet-rank member of the Administration and the first African American to serve as […]