Regs Talk: The CSS Blog
Blogs are authored by CSS members and policy experts, and have been reprinted with permission.
International Examples Offer U.S. a Blueprint for Aquaculture Regulation in 2020
By Hallie Templeton, Friends of the Earth For many years, powerful corporations, assisted by the very U.S. agencies tasked with protecting and managing our ocean resources, have collectively been pushing for development of industrialized fish farms off the coasts of our shoreline communities. Our fisheries managers and other elected officials have done little to mitigate […]
New Trump Rules Are a Sneak Attack on Medicaid
By Lee Goldberg, AFL-CIO There are the things politicians say, and then there are things they do. When Donald Trump was running for office, he promised there would be no cuts to Medicaid. As president, he promised “health care for everyone.” His aides promised “no one will lose coverage” and “no one will be worse […]
Narrow Definition of Waters Covered Under the Clean Water Act Puts All Our Waters at Risk
By Ellen Simon, Waterkeeper Alliance The Trump administration’s new unscientific, illegal, narrowed definition of waterways protected by the Clean Water Act is a threat to waterways throughout the United States. The definition excludes ephemeral streams, which flow only briefly during a period of rainfall. It also excludes wetlands that don’t have overland connection to protected waters. […]
Trump Administration Officially Invites Polluters Into Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments
By the Natural Resources Defense Council In another grotesque attack against our public lands, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) today finalized plans to allow drilling and other extractive activities in previously protected areas of Utah’s Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments, which the administration began to dismantle two years ago. “These plans are atrocious—and entirely […]
The EPA’s New Shameful Tactic: Avoid People Poisoned by Coal Ash
By Anita Desikan, Union of Concerned Scientists Imagine you live next to a coal-fired power plant. Near the power plant, you may have seen heavy machinery dumping loads of greyish substance into an open pit or a pond. You learn that the greyish stuff is called coal ash, a substance that’s chockful of toxic heavy metals […]
We’re Learning More About the Health Harms of Air Pollution
By Kim Knowlton and Vijay Limaye, Natural Resources Defense Council Inhaling polluted air causes physical and mental harms. We all know that air pollution hurts our lungs, but a new review of the science highlights evidence of more far reaching effects—including on our mental health. This research synthesis shows that exposures to air pollution reduce self-reported happiness and life […]
In the Fight to Clean Up Coal Ash, These States Are Making Progress
By Emilie Karrick Surrusco, Earthjustice When coal is burned to produce electricity, a toxic waste known as coal ash is left behind. Filled with chemicals such as arsenic, radium, and other carcinogens, coal ash poisons our water, sickens our bodies, and kills fish and wildlife. Thanks to federal safeguards that EPA adopted in 2015 after […]
The Deregulatory Dictionary: Defining Anti-Regulatory Buzzwords Used by the Right
By David Rosen and Matt Kent, Public Citizen With President Donald Trump’s war on regulation kicking into high gear, corrupt administration officials, anti-regulatory ideologues and industry lobbyists are eager to hide what they’re up to and how it will harm the public. Often, the way the right disguises and evades responsibility for attacks on workers, […]
Gina McCarthy to Congress: We Must Act Boldly on Climate to Protect Public Health
By Gina McCarthy, Natural Resources Defense Council Today I’m testifying in front of the House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis to make clear that the biggest public health threat we face today is climate change. And here’s what I plan to make clear: The longer we wait to reduce harmful carbon pollution, the more […]
House Oversight Shines Light on EPA’s Use of ‘Mercury Math’ to Justify Dangerous Rollback That Hurts Kids
By James Goodwin, Center for Progressive Reform On Thursday, the House Oversight and Reform Committee’s Environment Subcommittee will hold a hearing to examine the harm to children posed by the Trump administration’s attack on one of the most wildly successful clean air protections in American history: the Obama-era Mercury and Air Toxic Standards (MATS). The rule, adopted in […]
Raw Sewage and Forever Chemicals: The Trump Administration’s Growing Waterworld Debacle
By Derrick Z. Jackson, Union of Concerned Scientists The evidence is already spewing in about how foul our water will be under the Trump administration’s new water rules. In late January, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Andrew Wheeler officially removed protection for a huge percentage of the nation’s wetlands and streams, freeing toxic industries from having to fret […]
Wrecking the BLM From Within
By Vince Bielski, Sierra Club William Perry Pendley, the self-proclaimed “Sagebrush Rebel” from Wyoming who’s shaking up the Bureau of Land Management, may be headed for reappointment without any public scrutiny. The dustup over Pendley began in July, 2019, when he became acting head of the bureau–which oversees drilling, ranching and recreation on 245 million […]
Jacobs Is Unfit to Lead NOAA
By Gretchen Goldman, Union of Concerned Scientists Late Friday, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) released a batch of emails between high-level agency officials around Sharpiegate; BuzzFeed broke the news. Most of the emails are further verification of what was previously understood about how things played out at the agency when its leaders betrayed their own scientists after […]
EPA Finds Neonics Are Risky Business — But Plans to Approve Anyway
By Lucas Rhoads, Natural Resources Defense Council After a lengthy and long-delayed review of neonicotinoid insecticides, or neonics, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency released its findings this week, acknowledging that it had previously underestimated the serious risks these highly insect-toxic pesticides pose not only to bees but also to aquatic ecosystems, birds, other wildlife, and even human health. […]
The Proof Is in the Pudding: Wading Into Fossil Fuel Company Reports
By Nicole Pinko, Union of Concerned Scientists Every February through May, I sequester myself away to read company reports from major fossil fuel companies. It usually gets off to an exciting start in early February when ExxonMobil and Chevron release their shareholder-mandated climate risk reports – this year though, things started early when ExxonMobil released its climate risk report last week […]
Trump Continues Pushing for Needless Bird Deaths
By Katie Umekubo, Natural Resources Defense Council The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to propose a rule embracing Trump administration rollbacks of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act’s essential protections for birds. Flock of American Coot/U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service The Trump administration is hard at work digging its heels in on the Department of the Interior’s ill-conceived […]
Opposing Industry-Cost-Only Analysis as a Trojan Horse to Kill Critical Rules
By Better Markets Cost-benefit analysis (CBA) sounds good and neutral. After all, who could oppose only doing something when the benefits outweigh the costs? The fatal flaws in a cost-benefit framework only appear when the assumptions underlying the analysis are identified: that all the costs and benefits are known, quantifiable and weighted neutrally by an […]
A New Trump Administration Plan Threatens the Health of Millions of Medicaid Recipients
By Dorianne Mason, National Women’s Law Center A new Trump Administration plan to convert Medicaid funding into limited block grants threatens the health of millions of Medicaid recipients. Medicaid is a vital source of health coverage for millions of low-income Americans. Medicaid currently provides coverage to nearly 65 million parents, children, adults, pregnant women, elderly and people with disabilities. Women make up the majority of the […]
The Shocking Attack on Bank Supervision by the Fed’s Vice Chair for Supervision
By Better Markets The Federal Reserve failed miserably in the years before the 2008 crash. The facts are pretty clear that the crash could have been largely avoided, or at least substantially reduced in severity, if the Fed had even done a modest job in monetary policy, regulation or supervision in the years before the […]
Trump Targets the Heart of U.S. Environmental Law
By Jonathan Hahn, Sierra Club In 2017, in the kind of ruling that may not happen in the future, the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia found that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) had improperly downplayed the enormous climate impacts of the $3.5 billion Southeast Market Pipelines Project, which included the […]