On Tuesday, the Supreme Court granted six of the nine petitions challenging a DC Circuit Court of Appeals ruling in favor of the EPA’s rules regulating greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act. However, the Court granted review of only one aspect of the various petitions: whether the EPA’s use of vehicle emission standards to regulate greenhouse gases triggers permitting requirements for stationary power sources that contribute to carbon pollution.

The regulations at issue implement the Clean Air Act’s Prevention of Significant Deterioration (PSD) program, which regulates new major emitting sources in areas meeting the Act’s minimum standards for at least one of the so-called Criteria Pollutants. In these areas, which include almost everywhere in the United States, the Act requires EPA to impose a permit requirement on major emitting facilities, which would include a best available technology requirement, if the facility emits …

Salmonella outbreak reveals we need more, not fewer, cops on the food safety beat. 

Some 317 victims of salmonella poisoning from Foster Farms chicken sold in 20 states have learned firsthand why we need government.   Who knows how much faster the threat would have been contained if Centers for Disease Control (CDC) experts had been walking their usual beat, coordinating state investigators and working frantically to discover the origins of the virulent strain of salmonella that has already hospitalized 42 percent of the 317 victims?  

Instead, the investigators were sent home on furlough, and only recalled to work after the scandal hit the media.  

CDC investigators are a vital link in the chain of public protection because they are the people who “trace back” illness to its source. Obviously, knowing someone has salmonella poisoning is not enough: we also need to know which food, from what company …

In late September, the EPA proposed regulation of new power plants’ greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) under the Clean Air Act’s “New Source Performance Standards” (NSPS) provisions. Now an often little noticed follow-on provision—Section 111(d)--- is suddenly in the spotlight. Section 111(d) requires regulation of existing sources that are in categories of polluters subject to NSPS regulation. President Obama, EPA, industry, environmental groups, and states have all entered the fray about what Section 111(d) requires and allows. 

This issue presents several important choices and issues. First, regulation of existing US fossil fuel burning power plants—the source of over 30% of US carbon dioxide emissions-- is unavoidably central to US efforts to reduce GHG emissions. Second, in the face of the federal government’s long climate change inaction, many states and regions have already created programs and laws designed to reduce GHG pollution …

As it turns out, many of the same people who deny that climate change is a problem also deny that government default would be a problem.  No doubt there are several reasons: the fact that Barack Obama is on the opposite side of both issues; the general impermeability of ideologues to facts or expert opinion; a general suspicion of elite views.  But I’d like to suggest that there is also a deeper belief about the invulnerability of systems to outside shocks, either on the view that the system is very loosely linked or has a very strong tendency to return to equilibrium. These are actually a bit contradictory since strong corrective forces imply tight linkage, but most people don’t notice that.

For example, you might think that changing one atmospheric gas wouldn’t really have much impact on the world or that counteracting forces like …

Yesterday, the Hill published an op-ed by Center for Progressive Reform Scholar Joel A. Mintz entitled, "The Government Shutdown and the EPA: the Environmental Dangers of Congressional Recklessness."

It can be read in full here.

According to Mintz:

The indefinite close down of EPA’s operations poses major risks, some imminent and others long term, to the health and natural environment of millions of Americans.

The EPA’s enforcement of existing regulations provides vital protections against the emission of toxic air and water pollutants and the contamination of public drinking water supplies. The EPA works to prevent the exposure of school children to asbestos, the ingestion of toxic lead paint by infants, and the release of poisonous chemicals from long-abandoned hazardous waste dumps. The Agency also works to guard against the destruction of fish, shellfish and other aquatic life. In addition, the EPA supplies much-needed grant money …

Last Friday, Executive Order 12866, which governs the work of OMB's regulatory review arm, the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) reached its 20th anniversary.

Center for Progressive Reform scholars marked the anniversary by examining the Order's reach and OIRA's influence on the regulatory process including on the issues of transparency, timeliness and the centralization of executive power.

Here's a roundup of their contributions: David Driesen: Keeping OIRA from Harming Efforts to Reduce Greenhouse Gases Emissions "As of this writing, more than six years have elapsed since the Supreme Court held that greenhouse gases were pollutants under the Clean Air Act, many of them under a President committed to addressing climate disruption. In all of that time, EPA has not imposed any limits on the greenhouse gas emissions of power plants or factories, thus making climate disruption irretrievably worse than it might …

Ever wonder how Professor Tom McGarity knows about all those delays in regulatory review? Or how Professor Lisa Heinzerling learns about food safety regulations that the White House appears to be burying?

A series of catastrophic regulatory failures have focused attention on the weakened condition of regulatory agencies assigned to protect public health, worker and consumer safety, and the environment. The destructive convergence of funding shortfalls, political attacks, and outmoded legal authority have set the stage for ineffective enforcement, unsupervised industry self-regulation, and a slew of devastating and preventable catastrophes.  From the Deepwater Horizon spill in the Gulf of Mexico to the worst mining disaster in 40 years at the Upper Big Branch mine in West Virginia, the signs of regulatory dysfunction abound.  Many stakeholders expected that President Obama would move to reinvigorate the regulatory system, but he has not. In fact, he's gone so far as to adopt some anti-regulatory rhetoric, and suggesting that that alleged over-regulation contributes to the nation's economic woes.

One central reason for the systemic failure of effective health and safety regulation …

As indicated by the 20^th anniversary of Executive Order 12866, which guides the workings of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) at OMB, OIRA has become a fixture of the regulatory landscape.  OIRA review of proposed rules is problematic, as other blogs in this series have indicated.   In the Obama administration, however, this is an additional problem. Other offices in the White House, besides OIRA, are more deeply involved in making regulatory decisions than in any other previous administration. This deeper involvement has made it more likely that regulatory decisions will reflect political considerations rather than policy considerations.   When this happens, OIRA’s regulatory review under E.O. 12866 can become a fig leaf covering up for the political decisions that are being made.

There is an old saying that in government “where you stand depends on where you sit.” That is, your view …