EnviroPolitics Blog

Joe Biden taps adviser who ties gasoline price to emissions

President Obama high-fiving Jared Bernstein in 2010. President-elect Joe Biden named Bernstein to the Council of Economic Advisers. Pete Souza/White House/Flickr

By Scott Waldman, E&E News reporter

President-elect Joe Biden’s financial policy will be shaped — at least in part — by an economic adviser who believes fossil fuels are “severely underpriced” because they don’t consider the harm caused by climate change.

Biden announced yesterday that Jared Bernstein would be one of three members of the White House Council of Economic Advisers. Bernstein previously served as Biden’s economic adviser during his vice presidency, from 2009 to 2011, and was a senior fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a progressive think tank in Washington.

If his past comments are any guide, Bernstein will be the leading climate voice in the group.

Bernstein has argued that there hasn’t been a proper accounting of the economic harm caused by climate change and that bold ideas — such as the Green New Deal — are necessary to address the real cost of human-caused global warming.

In a piece published last year by Vox, he wrote that a true accounting of climate change means making corporations responsible for “polluting the environment pay for the damage they’re doing to the rest of us.”

“If the price system isn’t picking up the true cost of the damage and short-sighted people — which is most of us — are okay with that, then there’s a role for government to realign the higher social cost of fossil fuels with its lower actual cost,” he wrote.

Bernstein will be part of the three-member Council of Economic Advisers, which will be chaired by Cecilia Rouse. Rouse, who must be Senate-confirmed, is the dean of the Princeton University School of Public and International Affairs and would be the first Black woman and the fourth woman overall to lead the CEA.

The third member will be Heather Boushey, president and co-founder of the Washington Center for Equitable Growth. As the name suggests, the Council of Economic Advisers shapes the president’s financial policy.

Biden’s economic policy advisers are part of a “dream team,” Jason Furman, the chair of President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers, wrote in a Twitter post.

Bernstein “is a keen analyst and passionate advocate for working people who is also trusted and respected across the political spectrum. He brings macro, trade, labor & more to the role,” Furman wrote.

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Ex-Penn St. president’s Sandusky-related conviction restored

A federal appeals court on Tuesday reinstated former Penn State President Graham Spanier’s conviction for child endangerment over his handling of a report that former assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky had sexually abused a boy in a team shower. (Matt Rourke/AP)

By MARK SCOLFORO ASSOCIATED PRESS

A federal appeals court on Tuesday reinstated former Penn State President Graham Spanier’s conviction for child endangerment over his handling of a report that former assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky had sexually abused a boy in a team shower.

The 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled a lower-court judge had improperly vacated Spanier’s misdemeanor jury conviction for the 2001 incident.

Spanier’s defense attorney declined comment.

A federal magistrate judge in April 2019 threw out Spanier’s conviction a day before he was to turn himself in to begin serving a jail sentence of two months, followed by two months of house arrest. The judge gave prosecutors three months to retry Spanier, but that has been on hold during the appeal.

Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro said in a release that Spanier “turned a blind eye to child abuse by not reporting his knowledge of Jerry Sandusky’s assaults to law enforcement.”

U.S. Magistrate Judge Karoline Mehalchick in Scranton had agreed with Spanier that he had been improperly charged under a 2007 law for allegations that dated to 2001.

Prosecutors had argued the 1995 and 2007 versions of the law encompassed and criminalized the same conduct.

U.S. Circuit Judge Mike Fisher, joined by two others, wrote in the opinion released Tuesday that Spanier’s due process rights would only be violated if the state Superior Court’s ruling against him that upheld his conviction had been an ‘unexpected and indefensible’ interpretation of the child endangerment statute in light of prior law.”

“We conclude that it was not,” wrote Fisher, a former Pennsylvania attorney general and state senator.

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FBI probe focuses on Buffalo trash disposal contracts, contributions to mayor

The FBI has questioned the former CEO of a waste disposal company, Modern Corp., about the contracts it received from Buffalo Mayor Byron W. Brown’s administration and its contributions to Brown’s political campaign committee.

Buffalo Mayor Byron W. Brown

By Dan Herbeck, Buffalo News

The former chief operating officer of a Lewiston waste disposal business testified before a federal grand jury earlier this year about campaign donations to Mayor Byron W. Brown and the company’s contracts with the City of Buffalo, two sources said.

Gary E. Smith, the former Modern Corp. executive, was also questioned three times by FBI agents investigating the criminal activities of G. Steven Pigeon, the former Erie County Democratic Party chairman and lobbyist.

Pigeon has been cooperating with the FBI since pleading guilty to political corruption charges more than two years ago.

According to two sources with knowledge of the investigation, Smith told authorities that the mayor never demanded campaign donations from him in exchange for Brown approving Modern Corp.’s city contracts.

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Smith also told authorities he does not know what conversations Pigeon had with the mayor, the two sources said.

Those sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, told The Buffalo News that Smith gave authorities the following information:

• In 2015, Pigeon worked for Modern as a $25,000-a-month lobbyist, and one of Pigeon’s duties was trying to convince Brown and other city officials to give Modern a no-bid extension on its contract to dispose of the city’s garbage. The contract was worth about $5.5 million a year.

• Pigeon at one point asked Smith to pay him an additional $5,000 a month for Maurice Garner, a close political associate and confidante of Brown, in hopes that Garner could help convince the mayor to approve the contract extension. The Modern executive balked at the $5,000 but agreed to pay Pigeon an additional $2,500 a month for Garner’s help. Smith told authorities he does not know whether Pigeon gave that money to Garner.

• An aide to the mayor told Smith in May 2015 that the city had decided to extend Modern’s contract, but the city quickly changed course and put the contract up for public bidding after FBI agents and State Police raided Pigeon’s home office in downtown Buffalo, seizing his computers and business records.

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E.P.A.’s Final Deregulatory Rush Runs Into Open Staff Resistance

By Lisa Friedman, New York Times

WASHINGTON — President Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency was rushing to complete one of its last regulatory priorities, aiming to obstruct the creation of air- and water-pollution controls far into the future, when a senior career scientist moved to hobble it.

Thomas Sinks directed the E.P.A.’s science advisory office and later managed the agency’s rules and data around research that involved people. Before his retirement in September, he decided to issue a blistering official opinion that the pending rule — which would require the agency to ignore or downgrade any medical research that does not expose its raw data — will compromise American public health.

“If this rule were to be finalized it would create chaos,” Dr. Sinks said in an interview in which he acknowledged writing the opinion that had been obtained by The New York Times. “I thought this was going to lead to a train crash and that I needed to speak up.”

With two months left of the Trump administration, career E.P.A. employees find themselves where they began, in a bureaucratic battle with the agency’s political leaders. But now, with the Biden administration on the horizon, they are emboldened to stymie Mr. Trump’s goals and to do so more openly.

The filing of a “dissenting scientific opinion” is an unusual move; it signals that Andrew Wheeler, the administrator of the E.P.A., and his politically appointed deputies did not listen to the objections of career scientists in developing the regulation. More critically, by entering the critique as part of the official Trump administration record on the new rule, Dr. Sinks’s dissent will offer Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s E.P.A. administrator a powerful weapon to repeal the so-called “secret science” policy.

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E.P.A. career employees this month also quietly emailed out the results of a new study concluding that the owners of half a million diesel pickup trucks had illegally removed their emissions control technology, leading to huge increases in air pollution. And some senior E.P.A. staff members have engaged in back-channel conversations with the president-elect’s transition team as they waited for Mr. Trump to formally approve the official start of the presidential transition, two agency employees acknowledged.

Current and former E.P.A. staff and advisers close to the transition said Mr. Biden’s team has focused on preparing a rapid assault on the Trump administration’s deregulatory legacy and re-establishing air and water protections and methane emissions controls.

“They are focused like a laser on what I call the ‘Humpty Dumpty approach,’ which is putting the agency back together again,” said Judith Enck, a former E.P.A. regional administrator who served in the Obama administration.

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Trump officials move to relax rules on killing birds

Overhaul of the 1918 Migratory Bird Treaty Act would not hold firms liable for ‘incidentally’ causing scores of bird deaths

By Juliet Eilperin and Sarah Kaplan, Washington Post

A rule change easing companies’ liability for killing birds would not cause unacceptable environmental harm, the Trump administration said in an analysis published Friday, clearing the way for it to finalize a major rollback before the president’s term ends on Jan. 20.

The administration, which is racing to lock in a series of regulatory changes before President-elect Joe Biden takes office, can now publish a final rule modifying the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s interpretation of the 1918 Migratory Bird Treaty Act,

The act prohibits unauthorized “take” of protected bird species — regulatory-speak for hunting, killing, capturing, selling or otherwise hurting the animals. For three years, officials at the Interior Department have sought to exclude accidental deaths from the “take” definition, shielding energy companies, construction firms and land developers from prosecution if their operations “incidentally” kill birds.

The new analysis looked at three alternatives for interpreting the act: continuing to tacitly permit incidental take; codifying the interpretation that incidental takes are allowed; or strengthening the law to return to the historical understanding that companies are accountable for accidental killings. It suggested that all three options would “have incremental effects on current environmental conditions” but identified scaling back the rule as its “preferred alternative.”

The rule change is now open for a 30-day comment period, which ends Dec. 28. If finalized, it would set in stone the Interior’s Department’s current, narrow view of the law — making the policy easier for companies to understand but also making it more difficult for future administrations to reverse.

In a statement, Fish and Wildlife Service spokesman Brian Hires said the agency’s goal was to “provide legal certainty for the public” about what kinds of hazards to birds are permitted. He added it would make enforcement “across the country” more consistent and effective.

But the administration’s claim that the new rule wouldn’t cause significant environmental harm is contradicted by the rest of the analysis, said Audubon Society policy manager Erik Schneider.

The document suggests that the preferred version of the rule would “likely result in increased bird mortality,” because companies would have less of an incentive to adopt precautions to prevent birds from becoming ensnared or colliding with their operations. It also notes that permitting incidental take could have economic consequences from loss of beneficial ecosystem services and may hurt species that are important to Native American tribes.

Studies show that human activities are responsible for millions of accidental bird deaths every year. Hawks, owls and songbirds can mistake uncovered oil skim pits for ponds and get stuck when they attempt to scoop prey out of the sticky oil. Birds in flight suffer fatal crashes with communications towers or become tangled in telephone wires and power lines.

Trump has weakened more than 125 environmental policies. Another 40 rollbacks are underway.

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PFAS foam incineration banned in New York at Cohoes Norlite plant

While the bill banning incineration of Aqueous Film Forming Foam applies statewide, Cohoes-based Norlite operated the only such facility in New York that burned the substance.

New York bans PFAS foam incineration at Cohoes Norlite plant

Posted by Haley Rischar, Waste Today

New York Governor Andrew M. Cuomo signed a bill on Nov. 23 banning incineration of PFAS-laden firefighting foam, reports the Times Union.

While the bill banning incineration of Aqueous Film Forming Foam applies statewide, Cohoes-based Norlite operated the only such facility in New York that burned the substance.

Cuomo’s signing culminates a summer-long campaign for the measure, which was passed by lawmakers in June, months after it was learned that the facility had incinerated more than two million pounds of AFFF over two years through contracts with the Pentagon. They also shipped and incinerated AFFF from firehouses across the East Coast as the foam is being phased out of use due to concerns over its possible toxicity.

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“While this measure will ban incineration of firefighting foam containing these compounds in cities like Cohoes, our work is not over,” Cuomo said in announcing the bill signing. “We remain fully committed to this effort and will continue to advance comprehensive, statewide measures which protect all New Yorkers and our environment from emerging contaminants.”

“I appreciate the governor’s attention to this legislation and the support of the community and advocates who were integral to ensuring the passage into law,” added Assemblyman John McDonald who sponsored the ban along with Sen. Neil Breslin.

According to the Times Union, the bill to ban incineration was limited to cities between 16,000 and 17,000 population, which includes Cohoes. Because it’s the only place in the state where incineration takes place, it effectively creates a statewide ban.

Following revelations that the incineration, which was legal, had been taking place, the city of Cohoes in the spring imposed a year-long moratorium.

But environmentalists pushed for a permanent ban, leading to the bill’s passage, followed by several Zoom meetings and demonstrations in front of the governor’s mansion in support of the measure.

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