This morning, the Center for Progressive Reform's Rena Steinzor testifies before the House Science and Technology Committee’s Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight.  In her remarks, she calls on the White House to reshape the role of the director of OMB's Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs -- the so-called regulatory czar.  All too frequently OIRA has been the place where protective regulations go to get weakened or killed, and Steinzor argues forcefully that there's a better role for the OIRA director:  a defender of federal regulatory agencies and their missions, rather than an impediment to regulation.  She says:

The Obama Administration and Congress should define a new mission for the regulatory czar.  The American people need more, not less regulation on every front, from mortgage lending to workplace hazards. The regulatory czar’s mission should be to rescue struggling regulatory agencies by helping them …

There are few areas where the difference between the Republican and Democratic parties is more stark than that of the Freedom of Information Act. The FOIA, of course, requires agencies to provide copies of their records to any person upon request unless the record fits within one of nine specific exemptions. Among the most important of these are the exemption for classified information, inter-agency or intra-agency communications containing advice or recommendations, information compiled for law enforcement purposes, and private commercial information. Nevertheless, the Supreme Court has made it clear that the FOIA is a disclosure statute; nothing in the FOIA requires an agency to withhold records even if they fall within an exemption, although it is possible that some other statute might.

In 1977, the Attorney General under President Jimmy Carter issued a memorandum to heads of departments and agencies announcing that henceforth the Justice Department would …

Two weeks ago, Representatives Waxman and Markey put forth a 648-page legislative draft for dealing with climate change. That draft had proposals for the use of offsets, some good and some not so good (see my earlier post). Moderate and conservative Democrats on the Energy and Commerce Committee have now put forward suggested changes (as reported by ClimateWire) that they say are necessary to make the proposed bill less onerous. In general, these provisions would more or less weaken the targets and enforcement mechanism in the proposed bill, and that is not a positive thing. We already know that climate change is serious and that the U.S. is going to have to take a leading role in addressing it, or we will never reach the international consensus necessary to address the problem. Yes, it will be hard, but instead of shirking our responsibility to ourselves and …

It must be worthwhile; at least, I keep doing it. Wednesday was the third time in the last eight months that I’ve testified before a House committee about the costs of inaction on climate change, a topic I study at the Stockholm Environment Institute-US Center, a research institute affiliated with Tufts University in Boston.

The Energy and Commerce Committee launched a week of hearings on the Waxman-Markey bill, the “American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009” by one account, they have invited 67 witnesses to testify.

Wednesday was a staggeringly long day, beginning with Cabinet secretaries at 9:30 in the morning, then a panel of USCAP members (an alliance of major corporations and environmental groups, in support of climate legislation), then a panel that was half conservatives and skeptics (guess which party insisted on inviting them), and finally, starting just before 6:00 PM …

This item is cross-posted by permission from Legal Planet.

Quite a bit, and most of the news is bad.

American Rivers has declared the Sacramento-San Joaquin the most endangered river in the United States.

The longfin smelt has been listed as threatened by the state, but it is not going to be federally listed, at least not yet.

Commercial salmon fishing off the California coast is one step closer to being formally closed for 2009.

And while late rains have increased water supplies, some farmers are still slated to get little or no water this summer.

* The American Rivers report listing the Sacramento-San Joaquin as the nation’s “most endangered” river has garnered substantial media attention. The report cites the need to overhaul both water and flood management systems. As Matt Weiser pointed out in the Sacramento Bee, that’s no surprise to locals, but there is …

On Sunday, John Boehner, the House Republican leader, explained his view of climate changeto George Stephanopoulos:

“George, the idea that carbon dioxide is a carcinogen, that it’s harmful to our environment is almost comical. Every time we exhale, we exhale carbon dioxide. Every cow in the world, uh, well, you know when they do what they do, you’ve got more carbon dioxide.”

My first thought was that this was completely idiotic, making a childish argument that even George W. Bush would have scorned. The fact that some CO2 is normal and even necessary proves nothing about what happens when concentrations go beyond the normal level: salt is essential in small doses but you’d die of thirst drinking sea water. Even apart from the demonstration of abysmal ignorance of climate science, there’s the fact that cows emit methane, not CO2, and that no …

Tomorrow, Tuesday, Frontline will air Poisoned Waters, a two-hour documentary on the continuing pollution of American waterways (9pm on many PBS stations; check your local listings). Having seen part of the program, I recommend it. Watching a bulldozer move chicken manure – much of which will end up in the Chesapeake Bay – and seeing filthy stormwater drains pouring into Puget Sound serve as stark reminders for why fighting for clean water matters.

Six-legged frogs swim in the Potomac River. The oyster population in the Chesapeake Bay is decimated, only two percent of what it was fifty years ago. Approximately 150,000 pounds of untreated toxins drain into Puget Sound every day. One large industrial hog farm produces the same amount of waste as a city the size of Philadelphia annually – and much of this waste runs off into our rivers. The ways our waters are in trouble go …

As ClimateWire reported (available via nytimes.com) the other week, government agencies are struggling with how to fit climate change into the process of environmental review (such as for licensing energy facilities or expanding offshore oil drilling). At one level, this is a no-brainer. Greenhouse gases contribute to climate change, and climate change is the biggest environmental impact of all.

But as always, the devil is in the details. The direct use of fossil fuels resulting from a project should usually be easy to figure out. Adding the "embodied carbon" in construction materials is a bit trickier. Going beyond that, there are indirect carbon impacts. For instance, a federal action that decreases soybean acreage in the United States could raise the price of soybeans and encourage farmers in Brazil to cut down rain forest in order to plant more beans.

There's also the question of when …

Today, EPA gave notice that it intends to regulate greenhouse gases under the federal Clean Air Act. Technically, the notice is a proposed finding that greenhouse gases endanger public health. When it becomes final after EPA has had a chance to consider public comments, this finding will trigger other regulatory requirements that will move the U.S. in the right direction.

EPA's announcement is an important landmark, because it is an unambiguous acknowledgment -- finally -- that the federal government must play a role in curbing global warming. Perhaps more important, it will add critical momentum to congressional efforts to pass climate change legislation, because it effectively eliminates any hope that industry had of avoiding regulation of carbon emissions altogether. Opponents now know that if they delay or defeat climate change legislation, they'll eventually face regulation from EPA. That ought to focus the debate.

Some background: Section …