Cross-posted from Legal Planet.

Since opponents can’t seem to come up with any new arguments against climate change legislation, they seem determined to recycle the old, discredited ones. Here’s Tuesday’s example, straight from the GOP press release:

Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., and Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif, today urged the Environmental Protection Agency to include several relevant studies in its decision-making record for a major finding on climate policy after it was made public that a senior EPA official suppressed the scientific evidence for apparently political reasons.

“I’m sure it was very inconvenient for the EPA to consider a study that contradicted the findings it wanted to reach,” said Rep. Sensenbrenner, the ranking Republican on the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming. “ . . .

This is actually an old story, which has been debunked as many times as the urban myths about alligators …

Sunday’s New York Times article about the neglect of our clean water laws came as a timely reminder that, no matter how well articulated our environmental laws may be, it takes consistent, vigorous enforcement to ensure compliance with these statutory regimes. Unfortunately, as the article illustrates, state and federal enforcement of the Clean Water Act has languished during the past decade. Not only have governmental resources been inadequate, but all too often the will to enforce the law has been absent. Although water pollution violations often pose grave hazards to public health, the political climate in many state capitals seems to have favored polluters, even those who repeatedly violate the law, and the U.S. EPA appears to have been unwilling, at least up until the current administration perhaps, to force these recalcitrant states to perform their duties under the Clean Water Act.

While the article …

This item cross-posted by permission from Legal Planet.

EPA today announced that it would review 79 pending applications for Clean Water Act section 404 permits for surface coal mining projects in Appalachia (hat tip: Coal Tattoo). This review is good news, and an indication that EPA may be developing a backbone with respect to the effects of mountaintop removal mining on the region’s waterways. It remains to be seen how firm that spine will be, that is, how much EPA will demand in the way of changes before it allows the projects to go ahead.

EPA’s announcement suggests a new level of resolve on its part because the review will cover all the remaining applications that were pending before March 31, 2009. In June, in connection with the administration’s issuance of a new coordinated policy on mountaintop removal mining, EPA and the Corps announced …

Five State Attorneys General sent a letter to the Senate leadership on August 31st urging the Senate to enact strong climate legislation. The AGs letter is unusual in that states directly lobbying Congress on the details of federal legislation is a fairly infrequent phenomenon in and of itself. The AGs from California, Arizona, Connecticut, Delaware, and New Jersey are asking Congress to strengthen the House-passed American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES), despite several important ways in which ACES would largely displace state regulation of climate change. They accept some of these limitations on state power, but argue strongly for preserving their often pathbreaking roles in devising strategies to combat climate change.

Not surprisingly, the AGs first order of business is to tell Congress how important it is that any federal climate law enacted preserve state authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions generally. They specifically argue that …

Today at 12:30pm the Federal Leadership Committee released, pursuant to President Obama’s Chesapeake Bay Protection and Restoration Executive Order, seven draft reports to improve Bay restoration. Each report is about 50 pages, so there’s a lot of information to take in – from strengthening water quality to strengthening storm water management to assessing the impacts of climate change. After a quick look, here are my initial thoughts:

1. EPA Special Advisor Chuck Fox’s diligence and energy is impressive. Not only did he have to navigate EPA’s many layers of bureaucracy, he also coordinated representatives from the departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Defense, Homeland Security, Interior, Transportation and others to make sure these reports made the Executive Order deadline. He has been – and I think will continue to be – remarkably effective.

2. In contrast to the previous administration, the Obama EPA seems to be serious …

On Tuesday the Environmental Working Group (EWG) released a report on the status of state and federal agriculture policies for five Chesapeake Bay watershed states: Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania, New York, and Virginia.  The report focuses on agriculture policies that impact water quality and highlights a gaping hole in the regulation of animal-based operations. Past and ongoing efforts to improve the water quality in the Bay have focused on agriculture, where pollution control measures are fairly cost-effective (compared to wastewater treatment or stormwater runoff, for example). While these measures have reduced some of the nitrogen, phosphorous, and sediment pollution in the Bay, the agriculture sector still contributes the largest share of pollution: 42 percent of the nitrogen, 45 percent of the phosphorous, and 60 percent of the sediment.

For the report, EWG obtained data both on the number of permitted operations and animals covered by the federal and …

A feature article Sunday in the Philadelphia Inquirer, by Sandy Bauers, describes the impressive restoration of the Lititz Run, a stream located in the Lower Susquehanna Watershed in Pennsylvania.  Lititz Run flows into the Susquehanna River, which contributes about 40 percent of the nitrogen in the Chesapeake Bay, as well as a significant amount of phosphorous and sediment. Efforts to curb runoff, change agriculture practices, and upgrade sewer treatment plants by the local community changed the run from a fetid, polluted waterway into a healthy, permanent habitat for trout. The water quality in the stream has improved significantly over the last ten years: nitrogen has been reduced by 47 percent, along with nearly 10-percent reductions in sediment and phosphorous.

The agriculture sector contributes the largest share of pollution into the Chesapeake Bay, amounting to 42 percent of the nitrogen, 45 percent of the phosphorous, and 60 percent …

CPR's Dan Rohlf had an op-ed in The Oregonian on Friday, taking the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality to task.  Faced with news that the nation's largest emitter of mercury pollution is a cement plant in the state, DEQ moved quickly to...defend the polluter.  Rohlf writes:

The biggest mercury polluter in the entire United States is a cement factory in eastern Oregon. This fact has not escaped notice of the state's environmental watchdog, the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality.  The very day the federal government released a disturbing report on mercury's widespread threat, DEQ officials announced that the agency would work hard to make sure that the cement company could continue to release mercury at a level 60 times greater than new federal emissions limits.

 Huh?  While it may be hard to believe, the agency that describes its job as "to protect …

Prominent environmental commentator Bjorn Lomborg is at it again, this time convening a blue ribbon panel of five economists to assess the relative merits of different possible methods for addressing climate change.  As reported by Reuters Friday morning, Lomborg's panel concluded that "'climate engineering' projects, such as spraying seawater into the sky to dim sunlight, would be a more effective brake on global warming than increasing taxes on energy."  In a blog entry, The Wall Street Journal added that the economists viewed "any sort of carbon tax" as the least desirable climate policy reviewed and that a "cap-and-trade proposal . . . didn't even make the list." 

It's difficult to evaluate these claims in light of the sparse information actually released thus far about the report.  According to Lomborg's website, the economists relied on background papers concerning each of the proposed climate policies that were prepared …