ENVIRONMENTAL RETREATEPA Plans Target Climate Change Initiatives

By Alvin Powell

A Harvard expert in environmental law said a recent set of Trump administration regulatory changes targeting initiatives in the climate change battle will reverse progress made over decades.

Richard Lazarus, Harvard Law School’s Charles Stebbins Fairchild Professor of Law, said the late U.S. Sen. John McCain described the first Trump administration’s approach to cutting government programs as using a “meat cleaver” rather than a scalpel.

“I would say that Trump 2.0 in the first 71 days has been more akin to a nuclear explosion, with a bull’s eye on programs related to climate change,” Lazarus said on April 1, during an online discussion of the administration’s new goals for the Environmental Protection Agency disclosed last month.

Regulatory whipsawing is common, Lazarus said, as administrations undo what they see as predecessors’ harmful actions and overreach. Efforts in Washington D.C. today, however, go far beyond disagreement over how to regulate, questioning whether to regulate at all.

Carrie Jenks, executive director of HLS’ Environmental and Energy Law Program, agreed, saying that in mid-March the EPA laid out a roadmap of 31 steps it would take, targeting issues including climate change-related regulation, power plant and greenhouse gas reporting requirements, and support for electric vehicles. The steps also included reconsidering restrictions on the oil and gas industry, mercury standards that affect coal power plants, wastewater regulations for oil and gas development, air quality standards, and others.

Lazarus and Jenks’ assessments were part of a conversation hosted by the Salata Institute for Climate and Sustainability. The hourlong event, part of its “Harvard Voices on Climate Change” series, was moderated by Salata Institute Director James Stock, Harvard’s vice provost for climate and sustainability and the Harold Hitchings Burbank Professor of Political Economy.

A key administration initiative, they said, is the launch of a formal reconsideration of the 2009 “endangerment finding.”

That finding, ordered by the Supreme Court in 2007, concluded that the buildup of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere endangers human health. It provided the legal foundation under the Clean Air Act for government regulation of climate warming gases like carbon dioxide and methane.

Jenks described the finding as “a trigger” for subsequent regulation, so an attractive target for those seeking to undermine federal action on climate change. Attacking the decision on the basis of scientific fact, however, may be difficult, since the science is well-established.