Jody Freeman

Donald Trump made clear on the campaign trail that he intends to “get rid of” the Environmental Protection Agency and many of its Obama-era regulations. And in its first six months, his administration has overturned or halted nearly two dozen environmental policies and significantly backed off enforcement of environmental pollution laws. EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, who sued the EPA 14 times in his previous post as attorney general of Oklahoma, has been leading the charge. But rolling back Obama-era environmental protections is actually not that easy. There are laws that govern how the EPA can change its policies. And the courts are proving to be a considerable obstacle to the Trump agenda...As Harvard law professor Jody Freeman told me by email, “Courts don't tend to believe in ‘alternative facts.’ Even conservative judges stick closely to the record and can be expected to look skeptically at a misrepresentation of the science.”

In a rebuke to President Trump’s disengagement from worldwide climate change efforts, Gov. Jerry Brown told an international audience Thursday the president “doesn’t speak for the rest of us” and unveiled plans for a global environmental summit in San Francisco next year...The federal government is crucial for policy to succeed in the long run, but states can fill a role while Trump is in office, said Jody Freeman, a Harvard law professor who served as White House counselor for energy and climate change in the Obama administration. “This is just is of a piece of that effort to say, ‘Look, the U.S. isn’t stalling even though the Trump administration is committed to these rollbacks of climate and energy policy,’” Freeman said.

Donald Trump spent 131 days contemplating what life would be like if the United States left the Paris climate agreement. Ultimately, he seemed to like what he saw, and followed his gut. On Thursday, the president made official his long-rumored decision to withdraw the United States from the 195-nation accord...The Paris deal "is more fair to the U.S. than previous agreements because it includes all the major economies of the world, not just the rich countries, so both developed countries and developing countries have skin in the game," Jody Freeman, a Harvard Law School professor and director of the school's Environmental Law and Policy Program, said.

...Thirty-five videos, featuring Harvard experts in science, business, law, health, economics, engineering, public policy, design, and the arts, have been assembled over the last year and a half as a resource for members of the public who want to learn more about climate change.....While every viewer will take home different lessons from the videos, Griswold was struck by the discussion of climate change economics and public policy from Associate Professor of Public Policy Joe Aldy and Albert Pratt Professor of Business and Government Robert Stavins. He also pointed to perspectives on law from Archibald Cox Professor of Law Jody Freeman

President Donald Trump on Tuesday will order the Environmental Protection Agency to dismantle his predecessor's landmark climate effort, backing away from an aggressive plan to cut emissions at power plants that had been the foundation of America's leadership on confronting global warming..."There is a real question of whether they can legally dismantle the Clean Power Plan and replace it with nothing," said Jody Freeman, who was Obama's adviser on climate change and now directs the environmental law program at Harvard. Before the plan was put in place, she said, utilities found themselves exposed to potentially costly nuisance lawsuits from states demanding they take action to limit exposure to the public health threat of carbon. Those suits could re-emerge, she said, if the revised EPA plan lifts greenhouse gas restrictions on power companies.

An op-ed by Jody Freeman. One of the signal achievements of the Obama administration was reaching an agreement with the auto industry to dramatically increase fuel efficiency standards for vehicles, doubling them to 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025. The industry now wants to renege. At its behest, the Trump administration is expected to initiate a rollback. Weakening these standards would be a mistake for consumers, the environment and the auto industry itself. They are the most important action the United States has taken to address climate change and reduce the nation’s dependence on oil.

Donald Trump has long talked about reining in the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which is in charge of enforcing federal laws on air and water pollution. It’s a top priority for his supporters in the fossil-fuel industry...By the way, it’s unlikely that Pruitt can tear up the EPA’s Endangerment Finding, the 2009 analysis establishing that greenhouse gases were a threat and therefore need to be regulated, without Congress. “That has a voluminous scientific foundation behind it,” said Jody Freeman, a Harvard law professor and former Obama climate advisor. “The Trump administration couldn’t just come in and say nope, no more endangerment! There’s almost no chance that would be upheld [in court].” Plus, in a weird twist, if the EPA’s authority were repealed, that could open the door for common law suits against polluters in the states — a potential nightmare for companies.

President Trump’s nominee to run the Environmental Protection Agency survived a rancorous committee vote Thursday, putting him on the path to full Senate confirmation and a confrontation with California. Scott Pruitt, who oil and gas companies are betting will help them reassert dominance over the energy economy, has cast doubt on California’s power to force automakers to build more efficient, cleaner-burning cars...Many such provocations by past administrations eager to flex their executive muscle have gone sideways. They have bogged previous White Houses down in years-long, politically bruising regulatory and legal disputes, during which the president who set out to teach an early lesson to assertive states ends up getting schooled by them. “Announcing that you are going to give your supporters what they want by picking off a few high-profile policies and rescinding them is really easy,” said Jody Freeman, a professor at Harvard Law who served as White House counselor for energy and climate change under the previous administration. “Doing it is much harder.”

U.S. Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch has opposed giving broad deference to the EPA and other federal agencies during a decade on the federal bench, but his track record also indicates a reluctance to support “heavy-handed rollbacks” of Obama-era environmental rules, legal experts told Bloomberg BNA...And if confirmed, Gorsuch could also—if consistent in his reasonings—upend regulations promulgated by the Trump administration, Harvard Law School professor Richard J. Lazarus told Bloomberg BNA in an e-mail. “The challenge … is to have judges who in fact apply the doctrine in an even-handed way even when it goes against the policies they might personally favor or be favored by those who have nominated them to the Court,” Lazarus said...The cases in which he has made decisions on environmental or public lands issues are really more about his administrative law views, Harvard Law School professor Jody Freeman told Bloomberg BNA. “He seems to come down on both sides depending on the particulars of the case.”

President Trump's executive order to curb regulations may be impossible to implement, according to legal experts. Trump yesterday directed the White House Office of Management and Budget to provide guidance about how agencies could rescind two regulations for every one they publish. He also wants costs from new rules issued in 2017 to be offset with cuts to past regulations. Jody Freeman, director of the environmental law program at Harvard Law School, called the two-for-one regulation strategy "arbitrary, not implementable and a terrible idea." Freeman said the order notes agencies should follow through "to the extent permitted by law" and noted a president cannot order agencies to disobey the law. If they do, they will face lawsuits.

Now that he’s president, Donald Trump is laying the groundwork to drastically reshape the Environmental Protection Agency in the weeks and months ahead. All signs indicate that Trump will soon issue a flurry of executive orders as part of the process of weakening various air and water pollution rules and cutting agency budgets...The Clean Air Act requires the EPA to regulate many different pollutants, including greenhouse gases. So Trump’s team can’t just say, “We don’t like this regulation; it’s too expensive.” They’d have to come up with a legally sound argument for why, say, the Clean Power Plan is an inappropriate way to regulate CO2 from power plants and what they’d do differently. “If they try to shortchange this process and rush out a brand new rule, it really will not go well for them when they get into court,” says Jody Freeman, a Harvard law school professor and former climate adviser to Obama.

One of Donald Trump’s first acts as president was to announce a rollback of two Obama administration environmental efforts, one to protect waterways from pollution and the other to curb heat-trapping gases in the planet’s atmosphere. But while the Trump administration made the announcement on day one of his presidency, it may be years before his wishes can come to fruition, legal experts say. “He cannot roll all this back with the stroke of a pen,” Jody Freeman, professor and founding director of the Environmental Law and Policy Program at Harvard Law School, told BuzzFeed News.

As Donald Trump continues to announce administration roles, environmental experts and advocates are sounding the alarm over what they say are "extreme" selections that will put the government at odds with science and the health of the Earth..."You look at that set up and it's not a recipe for optimism," said Jody Freeman, a former counselor for energy and climate change in the Obama White House and director of Harvard's Environmental Law Program. "I think there's this undercurrent of threatening the legitimacy of climate science and I think that's very dangerous."

What will an anti-regulation, climate skeptic do as head of the Environmental Protection Agency? Environmentalists are bracing. But Scott Pruitt will also face limits if he tries to strip the agency of its power...Jody Freeman is the director of the environmental law program at Harvard Law. She also advised the Obama White House and is on the board at ConocoPhillips. She says EPA administrators get most of their power through setting program budgets and deciding which new programs to pursue or not pursue, and Pruitt would have wide discretion on enforcing environmental rules. JODY FREEMAN: And if he wants to slow down enforcement or treat the states more gently, be a little more lax, he can certainly try to do that.

Scott Pruitt, Donald Trump's pick to head the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, has fought President Barack Obama’s measures to curb climate change at every turn as attorney general of Oklahoma. Now he is hoping to take apart Obama's environmental legacy from the inside out, a task that could prove tougher than it sounds...Jody Freeman, a law professor at Harvard University, said such a move could create complications for the EPA, however, as it may be required legally to explain and support the change in direction.

Donald Trump has given every indication that he wants to dismantle the multitude of environmental rules that President Obama has put in place in the last eight years...Jody Freeman, a Harvard law school professor and former climate adviser to Obama, has been looking at this question extensively. Her view is that this won’t actually be easy for Trump — at least not without substantial help from Congress...I talked with Freeman about the mechanics of a potential Trump administration: how agency rulemaking works, what it would take to revamp Obama’s EPA regulations, why some environmental rules are much more vulnerable than others, and why Trump may not be able to undo everything Obama has done on climate.

Once sworn into office, Donald Trump will be in a strong position to dismantle some of President Barack Obama's efforts to reduce planet-warming carbon emissions. But experts say delivering on campaign pledges to abolish the Environmental Protection Agency and bring back tens of thousands of long-gone coal mining jobs will likely prove far more difficult for the new president...Dismantling EPA regulations is difficult, especially if the rules have already been finalized and implemented. "The agency has already built up a very strong record to support those rules," said Jody Freeman, director of the environmental law program at Harvard Law School. "It can be very hard to do an about-face."

President-elect Donald J. Trump has vowed to dismantle many of the signature policies put in place by the Obama administration to fight the effects of climate change...Under the control of the new administration, the office could slow President Obama’s latest regulatory initiatives by repeatedly sending them back for additional work. “It has been a brake on agency regulation throughout its lifetime,” said Jody Freeman, a professor at Harvard Law School and an expert on environmental regulation. “Some presidents have used it as more of a brake than others.”

President-elect Donald Trump will come into power next year with the authority to redefine his predecessor’s ambitious and divisive legacy on climate and energy policy. Just as President Barack Obama has used regulations and executive actions to try and make the U.S. a world leader in cutting planet-warming emissions across much of the nation’s economy—especially targeting the coal industry—Trump can largely act alone to define his own agenda. “I really do think there will be some kind of reversal of Obama-era policies, but there are legal, political, and practical constraints on how far the Trump administration can go,” said Jody Freeman, the director of Harvard University’s environmental law and policy program, in an interview with The Daily Signal.