CPR Member Scholar Nina Mendelson has a piece today in The New York Times's "Room for Debate" feature on the news that EPA is working its way toward regulating carbon dioxide emissions under the Clean Air Act.  As The Times quite directly and correctly puts it, "Under orders from the Supreme Court, which the Bush administration ignored, President Obama’s new head of the Environmental Protection Agency is expected to determine" whether CO2 should be regulated.  Among those joining the Times debate is John Graham, former Bush administration "regulatory czar."  (He's opposed to regulating, not surprisingly.)  Mendelson writes:

The announcement by Lisa Jackson, the Environmental Protection Agency’s administrator, that she will determine whether greenhouse gases endanger public health and welfare seems a welcome signal that the agency will respond to the urgency of global warming. As a legal matter, Ms. Jackson probably has little …

Over on Legal Planet, CPR Member Scholar Holly Doremus of UC-Davis and -Berkeley posted a blog Sunday on an upcoming decision on whether to introduce the Suminoe oyster, native to China and Japan, to the Chesapeake Bay. She writes:

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers issued a draft EIS last fall considering the impacts of several alternatives, including release of fertile Suminoe oysters and confined aquaculture of sterile oysters.You might wonder why federal agencies are involved at all. Virginia and Maryland proposed the introduction, prodded by the Virginia Seafood Council, which has conducted its own experiments with Asian oysters in tributaries to the Bay.

 

A Clean Water Act NPDES permit would seem to be required to introduce these organisms into the Bay, but until recently EPA was busy denying that it had any duty to regulate the discharge of living organisms into waterways. The Corps …

Editor’s Note: Following is the last of four posts focused on federal preemption issues and featuring CPR Member Scholars Thomas McGarity and William Buzbee. In December, both published books on the issue. (The first blog post in the series includes some background on the issue. The second discussed the very real impact the outcome of the debate has on individuals. The third looked at the prospects for progress on the issue under the Obama Administration.) McGarity’s book is The Preemption War: When Federal Bureaucracies Trump Local Juries. Buzbee’s is Preemption Choice: The Theory, Law, and Reality of Federalism's Core Question, and features chapter contributions from 15 experts, including Buzbee and McGarity, as well as a number of other CPR Member Scholars. We asked Professors McGarity and Buzbee to discuss the books and the issue, and here's the final installment of that conversation …

Editor’s Note: Following is the third of four posts focused on federal preemption issues and featuring CPR Member Scholars Thomas McGarity and William Buzbee.  In December, both published books on the issue.  (The first blog post in the series includes some background on the issue.  The second discussed the very real impact the outcome of the debate has on individuals.)  McGarity’s book is The Preemption War: When Federal Bureaucracies Trump Local Juries.  Buzbee’s is Preemption Choice: The Theory, Law, and Reality of Federalism's Core Question, and features chapter contributions from 15 experts, including Buzbee and McGarity, as well as a number of other CPR Member Scholars.

We asked Professors McGarity and Buzbee to discuss the books and the issue, and here’s the third installment of that conversation:

What's the outlook on preemption? Do we think the Obama Administration will take a …

CPR Member Scholar Nina Mendelson has a piece in today's New York Times "Room for Debate" online feature on California's Clean Air Act waiver request.  She says President Obama's direction to EPA that it reconsider its previous denial of the waiver (issued during the Bush Administration) "reaffirms the critical role of states as environmental leaders, something lost sight of in the previous administration."

She continues:

Permitting states to develop new approaches is not just about finding local solutions for local problems that might escape the notice of federal regulators. State governments also can serve as “laboratories of democracy,” in Justice Brandeis’s words, devising and testing new ideas to address societal problems. This is one reason why Congress allowed California to develop its own automotive pollution standards, a power California has had for decades.

This all may sound abstract, but the effects are concrete …

No question about it: A new sheriff’s in town. After eight years of environmental policymaking bent around the convenience of oil companies and other polluting industries, yesterday was like a breath of fresh, clean air. And indeed, clean air is one likely outcome from the Obama Administration’s first few steps on the environment yesterday.

In case you missed it, the first piece big news was that President Obama directed the Environmental Protection Agency to reconsider the Bush EPA’s denial of a waiver to the Clean Air Act requested by California. If granted, the waiver would have allowed – and now could still allow – California to impose stricter automobile emissions standards than the federal government’s. (The Clean Air Act allows states to do so, but only with a waiver from the federal government.) An additional 13 states are set to follow California’s lead, and …

Editor’s Note: Following is the second of several posts focused on federal preemption issues and featuring CPR Member Scholars Thomas McGarity and William Buzbee.  In December, both published books on the issue.  (The first blog post in the series includes some background on the issue.)  McGarity’s book is The Preemption War: When Federal Bureaucracies Trump Local Juries.  Buzbee’s is Preemption Choice: The Theory, Law, and Reality of Federalism's Core Question, and features chapter contributions from 15 experts, including Buzbee and McGarity, as well as a number of other CPR Member Scholars.

We asked Professors McGarity and Buzbee to discuss the books and the issue, and here’s the second installment of that conversation:

What are the stakes for individuals in this? Professor McGarity:  Ordinary folks have a tremendous stake in the outcome of what I call the “preemption war” because federal regulation directly …

Within the last 45 days, CPR Member Scholars have published two books focused on the question of federal preemption. The issue has arisen in two forms in recent years. During the Bush Administration, various regulatory agencies of the federal government – with leadership from Bush appointees – sought to use federal regulations to undercut citizens’ right to sue under state tort laws for damages resulting from industry irresponsibility. At the same time, Congress has inched slowly toward climate change legislation that could preempt – which is to say, undo – state and local action on climate change.  Of course, in the glaring absence of federal action, state and local measures are the only real action on climate change by U.S. governments to date. (Read more on regulatory preemption here, and more on climate change preemption here.

Both sets of preemption efforts have touched off significant legal and policy battles. On …

If you’re a consumer of health and environmental news, you’ve almost certainly heard it said that “children are not just little adults.” The warning comes up a lot in the context of medical research, because children’s bodies metabolize some things differently than do adults. That’s particularly important because somewhere in the vicinity of 80 percent of drugs prescribed for children have never been adequately tested for pediatric use. Lacking viable alternatives, doctors have gotten in the habit of prescribing them off-label. But the lack of testing means that there’s a lot docs can’t know for sure – like, how effective and safe the drugs actually are, what the best dosage is, and more.

The warning comes up a lot in discussions of toxics, as well, because children are often more vulnerable to certain chemicals than adults – for most of the same reasons …