Op-Eds

CPR Member Scholars and staff are frequent contributors to newspaper opinion pages across the nation. Read what they have to say, below.

Dangerous Illusions about Wetlands

Dangerous Illusions about Wetlands, op-ed by Alyson Flournoy

Type: Op-Eds (May 19, 2004)
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Author(s): Alyson Flournoy
Bush's Cost-Benefit View Carries a High Price

Bush's Cost-Benefit View Carries a High Price, op-ed by Frank Ackerman and Lisa Heinzerling

Type: Op-Eds (April 26, 2004)
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Author(s): Lisa Heinzerling, Frank Ackerman
Political Intervention: The White House Doctors Mercury Conclusions

Materials on the Environmental Protection Agency's Web site – buried deep inside hundreds of pages of internal documents – reveal the extent to which the White House was willing to override expert scientific conclusions to justify a weak proposal to control mercury emissions from power plants. Federal agencies are required to obtain approval for all major regulatory proposals from the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (led by the president's regulatory czar John Graham) within the White House Office of Management and Budget. In flyspecking EPA's mercury proposal, OMB economists and White House officials systematically downplayed scientific conclusions that methyl-mercury exposure causes brain damage in children.

Type: Op-Eds (April 16, 2004)
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Author(s): Rena Steinzor, Lisa Heinzerling
A Perfect Storm: Mercury and the Bush Administration

For the Bush administration, mercury contamination is the regulatory equivalent of the perfect storm. Four separate fields - science, law, economics, and justice - have combined to demand strict and timely controls on the intolerable hazards mercury poses for public health and the environment. While many expected the Bush administration to search for escape routes that favor its friends in the chemical and energy industries - which produce the lion's share of mercury - none were prepared for its headlong plunge into the tallest waves. Just as the doomed fishermen of the Andrea Gail sailed into the storm despite clear warnings, the administration is likewise proceeding with business as usual. This means no requirements for industrial plants to reduce pollution at the smokestack and no expectation that the oldest, dirtiest plants install modern pollution controls. Meanwhile, the clear and present danger posed by mercury is being ignored.

Type: Op-Eds (March 17, 2004)
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Author(s): Lisa Heinzerling, Rena Steinzor
Balancing Lives Against Lucre

Balancing Lives Against Lucre, op-ed by Frank Ackerman and Lisa Heinzerling

Type: Op-Eds (Feb. 25, 2004)
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Author(s): Frank Ackerman, Lisa Heinzerling
Talk till cows come home, but beef safety takes action

Talk till cows come home, but beef safety takes action, op-ed by Thomas McGarity

Type: Op-Eds (Feb. 12, 2004)
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Author(s): Thomas McGarity
Data Quality Or Scientific Censorship?

Data Quality Or Scientific Censorship?, op-ed by John Applegate, Don Hornstein, Thomas O. McGarity, Sid Shapiro, RenaSteinzor, and Wendy Wagner, published in Risk Policy Report

Type: Op-Eds (Oct. 14, 2003)
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Author(s): Donald Hornstein, Thomas McGarity, Sidney Shapiro, Rena Steinzor, Wendy Wagner

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