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The NSR Regulations Still Make No Sense: The 6th Circuit Reverses the DTE...
Last week, the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals reversed – for the second time – a District Court decision granting summary judgment to DTE Energy in the United States’ case alleging that DTE Energy had...
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The Conservative Uphill Slog for a Carbon Tax
Earlier this week, the Climate Leadership Council rolled out The Conservative Case for Carbon Dividends (note the absence of the “T” word in that title!). It’s a serious proposal and, if we lived in a...
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The Latest Executive Order: Any Kind of Consistency Is the Hobgoblin of...
Make no mistake, the Executive Order signed by President Trump at EPA yesterday is a big deal. Time will tell whether the Administration’s U-turn on the Obama rules currently in litigation, such as...
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Should Courts Defer to EPA’s Scientific Expertise if EPA Gets Rid of Its...
Earlier this week, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals rejected challenges to the Federal Implementation Plan EPA promulgated after finding that Arizona’s regional haze State Implementation Plan was...
View ArticleTrump’s “Tortured” Maneuvering Can Be Legal Maneuvering
Bob Sussman is a former high-ranking Obama and Clinton EPA official with a stellar academic and professional background. He recently published in Inside EPA a thought-provoking piece entitled “Trump’s...
View ArticleDoes Chevron Ever Permit EPA to Rewrite a Statute? EPA’s Release Reporting...
On Tuesday, the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia vacated EPA’s final rule governing reporting of air releases from animal feeding operations. The Court found that EPA had no statutory...
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Is It a Dividend? Is It a Tax? Could President Trump Care Less?
In February, I posted about the formation of the Climate Leadership Council and its push for what it calls its “Carbon Dividend” plan. In essence, it’s a gradually increasing carbon tax. The plan...
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NGOs 1, Trump EPA 0: The First Skirmish in the Great Environmental Rollback...
Last week, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals handed environmentalists at least a temporary win in what I think was the first case to reach judicial decision in Scott Pruitt’s great environmental...
View ArticleUsing Offsets with a Carbon Tax? Use what works.
Proposals to adopt a fee on emissions of greenhouse gases (also called "Carbon Taxes") have made headlines, with both "conservative Republicans" and "liberal Democrats" releasing ideas. An elevated...
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Turn On, Plug In, Peel Out
(With apologies to the late Timothy Leary [“Turn on, tune in, drop out”], who was referring to Electric Kool-Aid, not Electric Vehicles.)Today, September 18th, is the second anniversary of the first...
View ArticlePFAS – NOT JUST ANOTHER “EMERGING” CONTAMINANT
No longer emerging, Per- and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances (PFASs) have exploded on the environmental and toxic tort landscape in 2016 and in 2017. Cognoscenti will recall U.S. EPA phase-out initiatives...
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Court Rejects BLM’s Efforts to Unbalance the Scales of Justice
Last month, Magistrate Judge Elizabeth Laporte granted summary judgment to plaintiffs and vacated the Bureau of Land Management’s notice that it was postponing certain compliance dates contained in the...
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Coming Soon to a Northeast or Mid-Atlantic State Near You: Regulations on...
Earlier this week, eight states in the Transportation Climate Initiative issued a joint statement pledging to pursue regional solutions to GHG emissions from transportation. The statement does not...
View ArticleWhat’s Happening with the Other Clean Air Act (CAA) §111(d) Rule?
Long ago and in what seems like a faraway place, the D.C. Circuit vacated the NESHAP for boilers and the NSPS for Commercial and Industrial Solid Waste Incineration (CISWO) units. (See “EPA in the D.C....
View ArticlePASSING LESS GAS
While some still debate climate change, on 11/22/17, eight of the oil and gas industry’s biggest players signed on to a set of Guiding Principles for reducing methane emissions across the natural gas...
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The North Slope Is Really, Really, Getting Warmer. Drill, Baby, Drill
The Washington Post reported last week that Utqiagvik, Alaska (formerly known as Barrow), has gotten so warm, so fast, that NOAA’s computers can’t even believe it. The data for Utqiagvik (that’s hard...
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Statutory Deadlines Matter—EPA Gets Taken to the Woodshed
Last week, EPA was ordered to take final action on a Clean Air Act § 126(b) petition filed by the State of Connecticut, which asserted that emissions from the Brunner Island Steam Electric Station in...
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Federal Common Law Controls California Climate Actions: Never a Dull Moment
Earlier this week, Judge William Alsup denied a motion by Oakland and San Francisco to remand their public nuisance claims against some of the world’s largest fossil fuel producers to state court....
View ArticleInfrastructure, Deficits and Climate Change
America’s infrastructure is deteriorating as the result of insufficient investment by federal, state and local governments. In 2017, the American Society of Civil Engineers gave our Nation’s...
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How Much Deference Will EPA Get On Its CAFE Standards Decision?
There’s been a lot of discussion regarding EPA’s decision to withdraw EPA’s Mid-term Evaluation of Greenhouse Gas Emissions for Model Year 2022-2025 Light-duty Vehicles. After pondering for a while, my...
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