Regulatory Policy

Regulatory safeguards play a vital role in protecting us from hazards and ensuring that companies that pollute, make unsafe products, and create workplace hazards bear the cost of cleaning up their messes and preventing injuries and deaths. Still, the regulatory system is far from perfect: Rules take too long to develop; enforcement is often feeble; and political pressure from regulated industries has led to weak safeguards.

These systemic problems are made all the more severe by the determination of the Trump administration to undercut sensible safeguards across virtually all aspects of federal regulation. Moreover, the President and his team have taken aim at the the process by which such safeguards are developed, aiming to take a system already slanted in favor of industry profit at the expense of health, safety and the environment, and make it even less protective. For example, where critics of the use of cost-benefit analysis see a system that understates the value of safeguards and overstates the cost of implementing them -- making it difficult to adopt needed protections -- the Trump administration seeks simply to ignore benefits of safeguards, pretending they do not exist. The result is a regulatory system that fails to enforce landmark laws like the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act and more.

CPR exposes and opposes efforts by opponents of sensible safeguards to undermine the regulatory system, fighting back against knee-jerk opposition to environmental, health, and safety protections. Below, see what CPR Members Scholars and staff have had to say in reports, testimony, op-eds and more. Use the search box to narrow the list.

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April 15, 2004: CPR's Sidney Shapiro's reaction to OMB's revised Peer Review Guidelines.

Type: News Releases (April 15, 2004)
PDF: April 15, 2004: CPR's Sidney Shapiro's reaction to OMB's revised Peer Review Guidelines.
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Categories: Regulatory Policy Regulatory Policy

Strategies for Closing the Chemical Data Gap

Strategies for Closing the Chemical Data Gap, by John S. Applegate and Katherine Baer, White Paper 602, April 2006.

Type: Reports (April 12, 2006)
PDF: Strategies for Closing the Chemical Data Gap (400 kb download), by John S. Applegate and Katherine Baer, White Paper 602, April 2006.
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Categories: Regulatory Policy Regulatory Policy

Markets, Monocultures, and Malnutrition: Agricultural Trade Policy through an Environmental Justice Lens

Markets, Monocultures, and Malnutrition: Agricultural Trade Policy through an Environmental Justice Lens, by Carmen G. Gonzalez, White Paper 702, April 2007.

Type: Reports (April 18, 2007)
PDF: Markets, Monocultures, and Malnutrition: Agricultural Trade Policy through an Environmental Justice Lens, by Carmen G. Gonzalez, White Paper 702, April 2007.
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Author(s): Carmen Gonzalez
Tags: agriculture environmental justice agricultural pollution
Categories: Regulatory Policy Regulatory Policy

Applying Cost Benefit Analysis to Past Decisions

Applying Cost Benefit Analysis to Past Decisions, by Frank Ackerman, Lisa Heinzerling, and Rachel Massey. White Paper 401, July 2004.

Type: Reports (July 8, 2004)
PDF: Applying Cost Benefit Analysis to Past Decisions, by Frank Ackerman, (then-Member Scholar) Lisa Heinzerling, and Rachel Massey. White Paper 401, July 2004.
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Author(s): Lisa Heinzerling, Frank Ackerman
Tags: cost-benefit
Categories: Regulatory Policy Regulatory Policy

Doubting Daubert

Doubting Daubert, by Lisa Heinzerling, White Paper 511, August 2005.

Type: Reports (Sept. 7, 2005)
PDF: Doubting Daubert, by Lisa Heinzerling, White Paper 511, August 2005.
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Author(s): Lisa Heinzerling
Tags: cost-benefit
Categories: Regulatory Policy Regulatory Policy

Sequestered Science: Secrets Threatening Public Health

Sequestered Science: Secrets Threatening Public Health, by Rena Steinzor and Matthew Shudtz, White Paper 703, April 2007.

Type: Reports (April 17, 2007)
PDF: Sequestered Science: Secrets Threatening Public Health (273 kb download), by Rena Steinzor and Matthew Shudtz, White Paper 703, April 2007.
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Author(s): Rena Steinzor, Matt Shudtz
Tags: clean science
Categories: Regulatory Policy Regulatory Policy