Join us.

We’re working to create a just society and preserve a healthy environment for future generations. Donate today to help.

Donate

Blog

Showing 1,485 results

Erin Kesler | April 9, 2014

The Hill: Natural Floods, Unnatural Disasters

Yesterday, The Hill published an opinion piece by CPR scholars Christine Klein and Sandra Zellmer. According to the piece: President Obama recently signed a controversial bill that will directly affect the safety of millions of Americans. The fine print is so complicated, though, that it’s hard to predict exactly how our safety will be affected. Some say that the […]

Frank Ackerman | March 26, 2014

How the Koch Brothers are Hacking Science

Rhode Island has recently learned that its renewable energy standards could be ruinously expensive. But they’re in good company: more than a dozen states have “learned” the same thing, from reports from the same economists at the Beacon Hill Institute (BHI). Housed at Boston’s Suffolk University, BHI turns out study after study for right-wing, anti-government […]

| March 26, 2014

Greening the Idol Industry in India

I’ve been in Bangalore, India for about two months on a Fulbright fellowship to study Indian environmental law.  While I knew India has major problems with air pollution and sanitation, I didn’t expect that one of the major environmental controversies here would be about greening the idol industry.  Apparently, the gods in India can wreak […]

James Goodwin | March 19, 2014

The “Best” Regulatory System Money Can Buy: Lessons from North Carolina’s “Regulatory Reform” Movement

For years, Duke Energy has enjoyed virtual free rein to contaminate North Carolina’s surface and ground waters with arsenic, lead, selenium, and all of the other toxic ingredients in its coal ash waste in clear violation of the Clean Water Act and other federal environmental laws.  And it seems that both North Carolina’s regulators and […]

Wendy Wagner | March 18, 2014

Conflict Disclosures for Regulatory Science: Slow but Steady Progress at Last

Basic disclosures of conflicts of interest have been required by the top science journals for decades. Yet most regulatory agencies – despite strong urging from a variety of bipartisan sources – have failed to require these disclosures for private research submitted to inform regulatory decisions. This omission is particularly alarming since, unlike journals, agencies used this […]

Anne Havemann | March 17, 2014

CPR Submits Comments on the Chesapeake Bay Watershed Agreement

Maryland faces an important deadline in its long-running effort to clean up the Chesapeake Bay.  By 2017, the state will be legally required to have put in place a number of specific measures to reduce the massive quantities of pollution that now flow into the Bay from a range of pollution sources in the state.  […]

Anne Havemann | March 10, 2014

Enforcement of Environmental Laws a Victim of Obama’s Budget Proposal

EPA’s budget is in free-fall.  Members of Congress brag that they have slashed it 20 percent since 2010.  President Obama’s proposed budget for 2015, released on Tuesday, continues the downward trend.  The budget proposal would provide $7.9 billion for EPA, about $300 million, or 3.7 percent, less than the $8.2 billion enacted in fiscal year […]

David Driesen | March 7, 2014

The Keystone EIS’ Grudging Acknowledgment of Environmental Impact

The media has reported, erroneously, that the Obama Administration’s environmental impact statement concluded that the Keystone Pipeline would have no impact on global climate disruption. The facts are a bit more complicated, and much more interesting. Basically, the final EIS concedes that Keystone would increase greenhouse gas emissions, but it uses a silent political judgment […]

Frank Ackerman | February 27, 2014

Your Iphone Causes China’s Pollution

It sounds like a rare piece of good news about climate change: emissions of carbon dioxide, the principal cause of global warming, grew at a slower rate after 2000 in the United States, and have actually dropped since 2007. In Europe the story sounds even better, as overall emissions dropped from 1990 to 2008, often […]