By David Holmquist

As 2021 draws to a close, it seems appropriate to take a look back—to update some of the stories and follow up on some public policy issues I’ve covered for the eNews over the past year. Such a review calls, too, for a brief assessment and a look toward the future. The opinions expressed are mine, not those of One Earth Film Festival or its governing board.

In the July eNews, I called attention to an ongoing analysis in The Washington Post of the Biden administration’s effort to restore and strengthen US environmental laws and regulations in the wake of the Trump administration’s rollbacks. That analysis is still ongoing, last updated on Dec. 8. While the pace of this effort has slowed since the first few months after President Biden’s inauguration, a number of significant actions have been taken, in part aimed at putting administration officials in a position to stake a claim to renewed American climate leadership last month at COP26 in Glasgow.

As I suggested in that July article, undoing the damage done by four years of inaction and reaction on climate and environmental policy will be a long-term project. And it will depend on establishing a measure of partisan political stability so as to allow the project to move forward on a sustained basis. Unfortunately, our policymaking environment has been increasingly destabilized by partisan rancor, over a much broader range of issues than just climate and environmental protection.

That said, in the past five months, 11 of the 75 Trump-era policies that were originally targeted for reversal have been moved from the “Targeted” to the “Overturned” column, while roughly the same number have been newly targeted. Here are just two highlights:

After a 15-year legal and regulatory battle over banning the use of the pesticide chlorpyrifos, Biden’s EPA has finally committed to ban its use on food crops. (Chlorpyrifos is also used in residential pest control, but that’s a battle yet to be engaged.) A decade of research had shown that the chemical is neurotoxic, especially for children. Its use has been banned in the European Union. EPA scientists during the Obama administration had recommended that it be banned in the United States as well. Nonetheless, in 2017 then-EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt refused to follow the scientists’ recommendations and allowed virtually unrestricted use of this demonstrably toxic and dangerous chemical. This is an epic story with a hopeful trajectory. For an accessible deep dive on the issue, check out this WaPo article.
Last month, the Biden administration reversed a Trump EPA finding and released the final version of a rule requiring the public disclosure of pollution from natural gas processing plants. For context: In 2015, nineteen environmental organizations sued the EPA to require these fossil fuel processors to begin reporting their pollution to EPA’s Toxics Release Inventory (TRI), a well-established, publicly accessible online database with which the vast majority of industrial facilities have long cooperated. The Obama EPA responded swiftly—and positively—to the lawsuit by beginning a rulemaking process which proposed adding natural gas processing facilities to the scope of the TRI.
On January 6, 2017—just before transition to the Trump administration—Obama’s EPA released proposed regulations that would have required these plants to start publicly reporting their toxic chemical releases. Predictably, the Trump administration quickly shelved the proposal when it took office, and it had languished for more than four years. Increased transparency from this revivified regulation will almost certainly help to further withdraw the social license that’s been granted—without justification—to the natural gas industry.

In the category of policies added by the Biden administration, most of the activity has come in the form of executive orders. These initiatives can only be considered aspirational, and subject to revocation by future presidents. Sadly, they seem to be the only policy initiatives our critically dysfunctional political system will permit. In the area of climate change, they include:

Requiring that the federal government be carbon neutral by 2050, with intermediate goals for fleet transportation and buildings. How this aspiration comes to be embedded in actual policy is anyone’s guess.
Calling for half of all new car sales to be electric vehicles (EVs) by 2030. For context, consider the fact that fully electric vehicles already account for 78 percent of new car sales in Norway, the acknowledged global leader in transport electrification. Add in hybrids and plug-in hybrids, and that figure rises to 95 percent!
Developing a strategy for assessing climate-related financial risks to federal government programs, assets and liabilities. These types of assessments are better than none at all, but are based on cost-benefit econometric models and the ideological assumptions upon which they are constructed. They can be constructed to produce whatever outcomes the modelers desire, for whatever reason. (The same criticism cannot be leveled against climate science modeling, which is constrained by basic laws of physics. Economics, a social science, is not similarly constrained.)

In what the Washington Post has described as “. . . one of the president’s most consequential efforts to combat climate change,” the administration announced in Glasgow a set of comprehensive policies to reduce methane emissions from oil and gas operations across the United States. These policies include the setting of standards for the maintenance of abandoned wells, and a requirement that oil drillers capture the fugitive methane that is now often flared (burned off) or simply released into the atmosphere.

Infrared imaging detection of methane leakage at an oil drilling site. Source: Environmental Integrity Project.

The attention recently being directed toward methane and other greenhouse gas emissions (as distinct from carbon dioxide) is important and welcome, a confirmation of the overwhelming scientific consensus around the role of human activity—most significantly fossil fuel extraction—in global warming. As I noted in November’s eNews, recent advances in measurement technology are likely to reduce uncertainty and allow both advocates and policymakers to focus on no-nonsense solutions to this existential challenge.

Many departments of the federal government will be involved in establishing these methane emission policies, but the linchpin of their enforcement will be the EPA. While this may seem a giant step forward, the regulations that EPA must promulgate are inevitably subject to litigation.

The US Supreme Court has recently agreed to hear a case challenging the scope of EPA’s authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions with respect to existing power plants. Given the current Court’s dismissive approach to precedent, this case could result in the overturning of Massachusetts v EPA. That is the 2007 Supreme Court decision that affirmed EPA’s regulatory authority over greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act and opened the door, momentarily, for the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan and subsequent climate-related regulation. If Massachusetts v EPA were to be overturned, legally binding climate initiatives at the federal level would be limited to Congressional legislation signed into law by the president. That prospect is becoming increasingly dim.

Stay tuned.

Whither Chicago’s Electric Utility Franchise Agreement?

In September, the eNews reported on Chicago’s reevaluation of its Electric Utility Franchise Agreement, a process which aims to re-engineer and modernize the City’s electricity delivery system to meet the demands of the 21st century. As part of the reevaluation, a Request for Information (RFI) was announced, inviting interested parties—including but not limited to the incumbent, ComEd—to submit proposals for entering into agreement with the City. The reevaluation process also invited input from the public in order to foster the innovative equity provisions that had been incorporated into the proposed new agreement.

Responses to the RFI were due on September 30, and were to be posted on the City’s website. We looked forward to reporting on the responses this month, but none have been posted as of this writing. An inquiry to the Department of Assets, Information and Services was met with the explanation that the process had moved on to the Procurement Department, that negotiations (with parties not disclosed) were ongoing, and that confidentiality requirements prevented the release of any information—even whether or not any responses had been received. We’ll continue to follow this process, which might just result in the establishment of a transformational model for municipal utility operation.

In Retrospect: Urgency and Climate Equity at COP26

In October and November, I reported for the eNews on the agenda, then a first-blush evaluation of COP26 in Glasgow. In the month since the COP concluded, the usual congratulatory and reassuring media framing has given way to more sober and contentious analyses of the threat posed by climate change, and the recalcitrance of developed-world governments—especially the United States—on issues of loss and damage and global climate equity.

During COP26 and since, America’s mainstream (that is, politically centrist) media has ramped up its coverage of the accelerating impacts of planetary warming, most recently the imminent collapse of the East Antarctic Ice Shelf and the actually occurring impacts of climate change on the most vulnerable regions of the world.

Mainstream American media has also begun to acknowledge the inertia that has always characterized the United Nations framework for dealing with climate change. The inertia is a result of an arbitrary requirement to achieve consensus among the parties (that is, nations) at each annual COP, as well as consensus regarding the content of the IPCC assessment reports.

Developing country delegates to COP26 have openly complained that the Glasgow Pact was not a consensus outcome, but rather one forged by the raw power of developed world governments. Civil society organizations around the world appear to be losing confidence in this globalized UNFCCC process, and have begun to propose alternatives, including “climate clubs,” increased engagement on localized policy initiatives, renewed movement organizing, non-violent direct action (NVDA) and hunger strikes.

Stay tuned.