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In their crusade against “wokeness,” congressional Republicans are taking aim at a Labor Department rule about pension plan investments. The rule’s transgression is apparently that it makes it easier for pension plans to consider how climate-related risks might affect a company’s bottom line. To avoid being woke, the GOP would apparently prefer pension managers to close their eyes to financial realities, sleepwalking their way through the climate crisis. The real fear, of course, is that more wide-awake investment might disfavor some of the GOP’s biggest corporate supporters.

There are U.S. Supreme Court cases going back a century or more dealing with what we would now consider environmental issues, such as preserving nature or air pollution. But when did the Court start seeing filthy rivers and smoky cities as embodiments of the same problem, despite their striking physical differences? And when did it start thinking of “wilderness” as a good thing rather than a failure to use available resources?

Last year, Congress took its first big step into climate policy by passing blockbuster spending measures. Nonetheless, many states are ahead of the feds in climate policy. There were important developments in a multitude of states.

Here we are, starting another year. Last year turned out to have some major environmental developments. The most notable were the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in the West Virginia v. EPA case, striking down the Clean Power Plan, and the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, with its huge economic incentives for clean energy. Here’s a quick rundown of what 2023 might hold in store.

Well over a century ago, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that it had power to remedy interstate water pollution. That was in 1901. Six years later, the Court decided its first air pollution case. Notably, these cases came during the conservative Lochner era when the Court was hardly known for its liberalism. Quite the contrary. Yet the Court didn't hesitate to address pollution issues.

Since 1981, cost-benefit analysis has been at the core of the rulemaking process. The Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA), the so-called “regulatory czar” in the White House, must approve every significant regulation based on a review of its cost-benefit analysis. But cost-benefit analysis has had a major blind spot. It embodies techniques for analyzing possible harmful outcomes when the probability of those outcomes can be quantified with reasonable confidence. When those probabilities cannot be quantified (“deep uncertainty”), the analytic path is more difficult. This issue is especially important in the context of climate change, given the potential for tipping points to produce disastrous outcomes.

States have played a critical role in U.S. climate policy. The federal government is now supporting that role with federal funding for states. In the meantime, a number of states have moved a step further in plans to phase out gas and diesel vehicles. Two key states have ramped up their plans for carbon neutrality, while offshore wind made a big step forward in the Midwest.

Production and combustion of fossil fuels impose enormous costs on society, which the industry doesn't pay for. I want to talk about some options for using the tax system to change that.

What wetlands and waterbodies does the Clean Water Act protect? Congress failed to provide a clear answer when it passed the statute, and the issue has been a bone of contention ever since. The Biden administration is in the process of issuing a new regulation on the subject. Normally, you'd expect the Supreme Court to wait to jump in until then. Instead, the Court reached out to grab Sackett v. EPA, where landowners take a really extreme position on the subject. Not a good sign.