Caitlin McCoy

On the perpetual campaign trail, Donald Trump likes to brag that his regulatory rollbacks will save Americans from having to depend on the latest energy-saving light bulbs. (“To me, most importantly, the light’s no good. I always look orange.”) He promises to get rid of water-efficiency standards because toilets require too much flushing. (“Ten times, right?… Not me. But you. Him.”) The aim is to find a homey way to put across the message that regulations — especially environmental regulations — inconvenience the average American. They hurt the economy. They cost jobs...The move to discredit benefits began as a result of the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990 targeting acid rain emissions from coal-burning power plants, mostly located in the Midwest...At the time, the paradigm was that “like politics, all pollution is local,” says Joseph Goffman, executive director of Harvard’s Environmental and Energy Law Program, who helped write the original legislation as an attorney for the Environmental Defense Fund. The soot and other pollution that made a difference for human health was thought to come from nearby sources...The Trump administration has tried multiple tactics to skew cost-benefit calculations back in favor of deregulation. Caitlin McCoy, also an attorney in the Environmental and Energy Law Program, lists a few such tactics.

Senate Democrats are urging the Trump administration to pause non-critical work like overhauling environmental policies during the coronavirus pandemic. But the proposal is dead on arrival with the Trump administration, which said the crisis highlights the need for regulatory reform to cut red tape holding back businesses across the economy. It also comes as the administration enters a critical window -- just weeks remain to formalize rules that cannot be easily overturned by Democrats, should they prevail in November's elections. By late May or early June, there is no guarantee, legal experts say...From the date a regulation is formalized, Congress has 60 legislative days when it can vote to overturn the regulation, and then seek a presidential signature or veto. Because of breaks, weekends, and other days Congress is not in session, experts say the Congress that assembles next year could reach back as far as June or late May. This scenario does not become a factor if Trump wins reelection, or Republicans control at least one chamber of Congress. The administration does not have time at this point to propose an entirely new rule, perform the required formal steps and avoid the possibility it is rejected by incoming Democrats, according to Caitlin McCoy, a staff attorney at the Harvard Law School Environmental and Energy Law Program. Her team is tracking the Trump administration's regulatory changes and says the administration may have time to finalize several of its environmental priorities before the deadline.

The EPA overcorrected when it scrapped an entire Obama-era climate regulation in response to a court order focused on just part of the rule, the D.C. Circuit said. The Tuesday ruling is a win for the Natural Resources Defense Council and a coalition of states that challenged the Environmental Protection Agency’s decision to eliminate Obama-era restrictions on hydrofluorocarbons. One state called it “an important victory in the fight against climate change.” The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit agreed with the challengers that the EPA shouldn’t have fully tossed the 2015 restrictions on HFCs, powerful greenhouse gases that are used in air conditioning, refrigeration, and other products...Caitlin McCoy, an attorney for Harvard Law School’s Environmental and Energy Law Program, said the ruling will block the EPA from trying to use court decisions as cover for broader policy moves in other contexts. “The D.C. Circuit has made it clear that EPA cannot say it is merely implementing a court decision and use that as a backdoor to finalize additional changes without providing public notice and an opportunity to comment,” she said. “This is an important decision at an important time as the agency faces a lot of litigation that it may implement through rules as decisions come down in the near future,” McCoy added.

It is difficult to focus on anything other than Covid-19 in our current news environment, but spare a moment for President Trump’s new fuel economy standards, announced in final form on Tuesday. They replace the Obama administration’s standards, which would have pushed the US auto fleet to an average efficiency of 54.5 mpg by 2025, with standards that would reach only 40 mpg (a goal the industry expects to exceed even without a rule). By the Trump administration’s calculations, the change will result in almost a billion more tons of greenhouse gases emitted over the next five years. In one stroke, the best thing Obama ever did for climate change —addressing the most carbon-intensive sector of the US economy — has become the worst thing Trump has done for climate change...On March 31, the administration released phase two, the Safe Affordable Fuel-Efficient (SAFE) rule. SAFE no longer freezes standards in place. Instead, it requires fuel efficiency to rise a mild 1.5 percent a year, reaching 40 mpg in 2025. That is almost certainly a slower pace of improvement than the industry will achieve on its own, with no prompting... “But when we look at the numbers,” Caitlin McCoy, a staff attorney at Harvard’s Environmental & Energy Law Program, wrote in an analysis of the rule, “the vehicle purchase price would be reduced by $977 to $1,083 relative to the Obama rules, but the increased price at the pump of driving less fuel-efficient vehicles would be $1,423 to $1,461 (at 3% discount rate).” Even at a higher 7 percent discount rate, increased fuel costs outweigh vehicles savings in the most optimistic scenario.

The Trump administration yesterday unsheathed the second part of its massive rollback of Obama-era clean car standards, setting the stage for a prolonged legal feud as the nation struggles to address the global coronavirus pandemic. The long-awaited and nearly 2,000-page Safer Affordable Fuel-Efficient (SAFE) Vehicles Rule unravels a 2012 standard designed to significantly curb air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions from cars and trucks. EPA and the Transportation Department last fall released part one of the SAFE Vehicles Rule, which prevented California from setting stricter emissions limits than the federal government. That regulation is already subject to challenges in the courts...Lawsuits against the new rules will likely be rooted in the Administrative Procedure Act, which governs federal rulemaking, said Caitlin McCoy, a climate, clean air and energy fellow at Harvard Law School. Challengers are likely to target the new rule as an “arbitrary and capricious” change to Obama-era standards that provided more environmental stringency and regulatory clarity for automakers. “What [challengers will] need to try to do is show that the agencies improperly ignored evidence in the record,” McCoy said, adding that the Trump administration’s changes will need to stand up against analysis done by Obama officials.

The White House’s nascent effort to bail out oil and gas producers struggling with plunging oil prices could become a political boondoggle, legal and industry experts say, given the difficulty of finding congressional support for offering federal dollars to an industry plagued by reckless financing and devastating effects on the climate. The price war that broke out between Saudi Arabia and Russia on Sunday pushed the price of crude into its steepest single-day nosedive since 1991. Both producers vowed to continue oversupplying the market even as the panic over the coronavirus pandemic grounded planes and shuttered factories, significantly reducing demand... "The industry has gotten quite a few things off its wish list from this administration. Yet the administration is still willing to do more. It’s just, like, when will it ever end?" Caitlin McCoy, environmental and energy fellow at Harvard Law School. The industry carries important symbolism for the Trump administration, which cast its efforts to deregulate and expand the industry as vital to its nationalist agenda.

Caitlin McCoy, the Climate, Clean Air, & Energy Fellow for Harvard Law School's Environmental & Energy Law Program was on KPFA’s The Talkies with Kris Welch [at 31:00]. They discussed HLS's Regulatory Rollback Tracker and the environmental rollbacks to watch right now as we head into the 2020 elections.