In a CPRBlog post on Friday, 9/24, we inadvertantly referred to the Chesapeake Bay Program as the Chesapeake Bay Commission. The Program is a regional partnership of states and the District of Columbia working together to restore the Bay. The Commission is a group of 21 elected officials, appointees and citizen representatives conducting research, policymaking and consensus-building on Bay issues.
There's a big difference between the two entitites, their methods, and their work. It was a simple mistake, but not insignificant. We regret the error. We've corrected the post, here.
Full textOver on Slate this weekend, William Saletan posted an Elena Kagan piece in which he describes a 1996 incident in which the future presumptive Supreme Court Justice, then working at the White House, commented on a draft statement on “partial birth abortion” by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG).
Congress was then on the verge of banning certain abortion procedures lumped together under the umbrella of “partial birth,” a name made up by the right wing and not otherwise used by doctors. ACOG had drafted a statement saying that its select panel on the subject had concluded that while it could identify no circumstances under which the “intact D&X” procedure, which seemed to be the procedure the right wingers in Congress were after, “would be the only option to save the life or preserve the health of the woman…[t]he potential exists that legislation prohibiting specific medical practices, such as intact D&X, may outlaw techniques that are critical to the lives and health of women.”
ACOG submitted the draft to the White House for comment, and Kagan, in her role as associate White House counsel, proposed revisions, which ACOG subsequently incorporated, revising the relevant portion of the statement, by adding the sentence, “An intact D&X, however, may be the best or most appropriate procedure in a particular circumstance to save the life or preserve the health of a woman, and only the doctor, in consultation with the patient, based upon the woman's particular circumstances, can make this decision.”
Full textIn an op-ed in this morning's Raleigh News & Observer, CPR Member Scholar Victor Flatt describes why it is that BP was allowed to drill its Macondo 252 deepwater well -- the one that is now spewing oil into the Gulf -- without conducting a serious analysis of the risks of a blowout, and providing a detailed and realistic plan describing what it would do in such a scenario. Flatt writes:
The National Environmental Policy Act requires that federal agencies analyze the environmental risks before they agree to permit activity under their jurisdiction (like drilling and operating a deepwater oil well). We know that in the Deepwater Horizon case, the MMS [Minerals Management Service] approved the drilling and operating permits without undergoing full NEPA analysis, instead allowing the permitting under a NEPA exception known as a categorical exclusion, an exception to be used only when there are definitively no risks of impacts on the environment.... BP as well as all of other deepwater operators claimed that there was very little risk of a blowout, and that in case of one, they had the necessary tools (the blowout preventer systems) to stop anything bad from happening (which is how they got the categorical exclusion in the first place). And the MMS would have accepted this because it did not have independent resources to verify these analyses....
So how do we prevent this and other things like it from happening again? One easy step would be to make a simple regulatory change to NEPA so that in cases where there is any uncertainty about environmental impacts, the applicant must produce what is known as a "worst-case analysis." Then at least the MMS (and the public) would have understood and realized that if a blowout occurred and the blowout preventer systems failed, that there would likely be deaths, and that we had no way of immediately stopping the gushing of oil from causing severe environmental harm.
A worst-case analysis in the Deepwater Horizon permitting application might have prompted the MMS to examine how likely a blowout would be to occur, and ask for at least some changes based on that likelihood.
For more of what CPR's Member Scholars have been saying about the BP spill on the nation's op-ed pages, go here.
Full textCPR President Rena Steinzor has an op-ed in this morning's Baltimore Sun on the various regulatory failures at work in the BP oil spill. She writes that important questions need to be answered "about how the federal regulatory system allowed BP and other oil companies to drill in waters so deep without effective fail-safes," and continues:
In truth, this is just the last in a string of profit-driven tragedies that have horrified us recently. Consider the 29 workers smothered in a West Virginia mine shaft; salmonella-laced peanut butter that killed nine and sickened thousands; the recall of 8 million Toyotas after as many as 89 people were killed in sudden acceleration incidents; children's toys slathered with lead paint; drywall venting sulfuric acid into living rooms; and now the worst environmental disaster in our history, which initially killed 11 workers.
The companies that caused these tragedies deserve much of the blame, and where crimes were committed, prosecutions and civil litigation should follow. But it's also vital to understand just why the regulators charged with the job of preventing such disasters have failed so spectacularly.
She goes on to dismantle a couple of right wing arguments against inconveniencing industry -- the Rand Paul line that "accidents happen," and we should just live with them and leave industry alone; and the notion that the spill demonstrates that "big government" regulation doesn't work and that we should rely on corporate self-interest to save us from such disasters.
Full textCPR Member Scholar Dan Farber was on the PBS NewsHour on June 14 discussing the Obama Administration's plan to force BP to establish an escrow fund to compensate victims of its oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. You can see the entire interview with Ray Suarez, on the NewsHour site. Here's a snip of the transcript:
RAY SUAREZ: Daniel Farber, you're familiar with what's in that federal oil protection act. Is there a mechanism in there for the government to say, you must create an escrow fund?
DANIEL FARBER: They're -- certainly, it's true that, at the end of the day, victims can go to court and sue. And BP also has to have a mechanism for processing claims before that. But I don't see anything at least that to my mind requires them to set up this escrow or trust fund. I think it might be a good idea, but I'm not at all sure that it's in the law.
RAY SUAREZ: Well, Daniel Farber, the advantages of having money set aside well before the years of litigation begin, is there something in it for BP, as well as for the claimants, if that can be agreed to?
DANIEL FARBER: No, I -- yes, I think -- I think there is. I think BP is facing a situation where there is enormous distrust about its capability for dealing with this, about its good faith, on the part of a lot of people inside the U.S. government and among the public. I think setting up a fund like this would be very helpful for them, in terms of showing good faith, of assuring people that they are going to take responsibility for what happened. So, I see a lot of reasons for them to do it. Whether they have to do it, though, is something that's less clear.
Full textIt’s fascinating to listen to the media, with lots of encouragement from the right wing, inch its way toward blaming the BP Oil Spill on President Obama. Apparently the President’s job description includes a previously unknown provision about deep-sea plumbing expertise.
Let’s follow the media’s path for a moment here. First we heard media whining that the President was insufficiently engaged in the crisis, on the strength of no evidence whatsoever. Then the press went through a "false equivalency" phase, with a wave of speculation over whether this was, “Obama’s Katrina.” Then we heard howls from FOX commentator Sarah Palin (she of “drill, baby, drill” fame) that he hadn’t cozied up personally to BP CEO Tony Hayward. Now former American Enterprise Institute Fellow and current Washington Post columnist Anne Applebaum complains that he’s bending too far in the opposite direction, engaging so visibly in managing the crisis that he’s raising false hopes that the government can indeed apply some sort of fix to the leak, which, of course, makes him look weak to the rest of the world.
President Obama’s in a horrible spot. Neither the oil industry nor the federal government has the technology to fix the leak anytime soon – that much is painfully clear. BP will surely have its chance to explain to Congress and to a judge why it represented repeatedly that it had such technology when it didn't. And the Minerals Management Service will get its chance to explain why it took those assertions at face value. But in the meantime, the sheer enormity of the problem creates a huge appetite for blame-laying. And the President is all too inviting and visible a figure to escape some share of it.
But I feel about this the same way I did about the argument over whether President Clinton’s deregulatory policies or President Bush’s deregulatory policies were responsible for the banking crisis that plunged us into recession. I don’t care so much who the media decides to blame, so long as we correctly identify the policies that are to blame. In this case, one glaring policy failure is that the federal government is inexcusably lax in its regulation of the oil industry. That’s no accident, of course. Industry likes it that way, and its allies on the Hill are similarly contented. Note, for example, that you haven’t heard a chorus of Republicans calling for stronger regulation of the oil industry, even though the political benefits for staking out such a position would be almost limitless for them.
Full textCPR Member Scholar Victor Flatt has an op-ed piece in this morning's Houston Chronicle, in which he argues that the week of April 20 will likely be recalled as "one of the most pivotal and important weeks in the history of energy in this country," citing the confluence of the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon offshore oil drilling platform and its disastrous environmental consequences, and the federal approval of the massive Cape Wind project in Nantucket Sound to capture wind energy. He writes:
To be sure, offshore wind power has costs: impacts on animal habitat (notably birds'), possibly on fishing and on view-scapes. But in this case, cold calculation has determined that these costs are worth it when compared to the benefits of mostly pollution-free energy production. In the last few months, studies have shown that a string of offshore wind projects along the East Coast could provide ample electricity and, if the projects were linked by transmission lines, very dependable electricity, as wind variation is not uniform up and down the coast. In Germany and Denmark, linked wind systems have become so dependable that wind is sometimes preferentially used as base power over coal and nuclear.
The confluence of both these events also illustrates a move in the direction of the public good over the private good. Despite claims to the contrary, it is rarely the general public that is clamoring for more offshore oil drilling. While many people might like to have lower gasoline prices and reduced dependence on foreign oil, when the public actually sees the trade-offs in price, few make offshore drilling a priority. The political push for offshore drilling comes from the companies themselves, which realize profit through the recovery and processing of this product. Cape Wind also hopes to realize a profit, but it also has significant support from a public that wants to see viable greenhouse-gas-free energy become the norm. The public's clamor was enough to overcome even the most politically well-connected private opposition to Cape Wind, and this signals the breaking of a logjam. More and more approvals will be forthcoming, and this will transform the energy landscape.
The Deepwater Horizon platform exploded and the Cape Wind project was approved the same week that ongoing political rancor prompted a delay in the long-awaited Kerry-Graham-Lieberman energy/climate change bill. That legislation was originally seen as history in the making. Today, we're seeing history made in a different and possibly more powerful way — outside the political process and inside the minds of the public.
In addition to his CPR role, Professor Flatt wears a few other hats. He's the Tom & Elizabeth Taft Distinguished Professor of Environmental Law at the University of North Carolina School of Law; and a Distinguished Scholar of Carbon Trading and Carbon Markets, at the Global Energy Management Institute, University of Houston Bauer College of Business.
Full textThe tagline that the producers of Food, Inc. are using to promote their Academy Award-winning documentary is “You’ll never look at dinner the same way.” They’re quite right. The film airs on many PBS stations this evening (and on others throughout the course of the next week). See for yourself.
I came to it expecting that I’d end up feeling guilty about being part of the industry-consumer web that subjects farm animals to “nasty, brutish and short” lives, before slaughtering them for hamburger. I did feel guilty, and still do, days later. But more than that, you come away from Food, Inc. convinced that in the interest of maximizing profits for the food industry, we’ve introduced hazards into the food we eat, created an obesity problem, and allowed mega-corporations to run roughshod over family farmers.
I won’t spoil the story, but the surprising element for the lay viewer like me is the extent to which agribusiness’s fixation with corn figures into the tale. Not only do we sweeten our sodas with corn syrup, we ship corn great distances to feed it to cattle whose wiring is geared toward grass. But corn gets the cattle fatter faster, so out with grazing in the grass, in with eating corn in filthy stall. But more than that, corn also makes cattle susceptible to illnesses that we treat with antibiotics, driving a variety of problems. In addition, the corn has led to new strains of E. coli. The story of one victim of such E. coli is told in the film, in heartbreaking fashion.
Full textThe Competitive Enterprise Institute is upset with the way administrative law works. On Thursday they released their annual report on the costs of regulations. I hesitate to dignify it with pixels, but here goes.
CEI has a problem with agency rulemaking altogether:
Congress should answer for the compliance costs (and benefits) of federal regulations. Requiring expedited votes on economically significant or controversial agency rules before they become binding on the population would reestablish congressional accountability and would help fulfill the principle of “no regulation without representation.”
First, CEI owes an apology to our revolutionary forebears for bending the notion of “no taxation without representation” into an anti-regulatory chant. And while I’m diverting, exactly who is without representation in this construction?
More significantly, long before agencies adopt regulations – and in many cases, a very long time before they adopt them – elected officials have already passed health and safety laws with instructions to the agencies on how rules are to be developed. In theory, the policymaking and political part of the process is supposed to end right there. The agencies are supposed to implement the law, applying whatever technical expertise is required in a way that’s consistent with Congress’s direction.
Full textAbout a year ago in this space, I wrote a piece taking the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to task for its unhinged reaction to the Environmental Protection Agency’s then-nascent efforts to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. As an example of the bombast, I included a link to a speech made by Chamber board member Don Blankenship, head of Massey Energy, in which he denied climate change, compared those who disagree with him with Osama Bin Laden and called them communists and atheists, accused environmentalists of “taking over the world,” and much more.
Apparently, such outrageous rhetoric doesn’t disqualify someone from being on the board of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. You know what else doesn’t disqualify a coal industry honcho ? Operating a dangerous mine. It was in a Massey mine that 25 coal miners died earlier this week, after a methane explosion – the same mine, ThinkProgress notes, that had been cited for more than 3,000 safety violations in the last 15 years. Fifty-three of those violations were issued this past March.
The anti-regulatory crowd is fond of asserting that, left to their own devices, markets are self-correcting, and that abuses will be punished in the marketplace. The long history of mining deaths in the United States – more than 1,000/year through the first half of the 20th Century, then gradually down to about 30 a year between 2000 and 2005, according to the Mine Safety and Health Administration, and not counting black lung disease – argues otherwise, of course. But the argument persists. Perhaps the Massey disaster will test the theory.
It’s too soon to know what caused this week’s disaster – whether it was the product of Massey negligence or something else. But one thing we know for sure is that Massey’s safety record is, as the AP put it, “spotty.” And to think, until this week, Don Blankenship was best known for his political extremism.
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