21 March — Vulnerabilities in the Regulatory Process: Science, Economics and Legal Analyses in Selected EPA Rulemaking in 2017-2020
Date: 21 March 2022
Time: 12:00pm ET
Location: Wean Hall 3701 & via Zoom
Speaker: Shanti Gamper-Rabindran
Topic: Vulnerabilities in the Regulatory Process: Science, Economics and Legal Analyses in Selected EPA Rulemaking in 2017-2020
Abstract: Federal agencies serve as institutions of governance. They use science and economic analysis, within legal powers granted by Congress – to protect the public interest, including public health and the environment. However, the Trump administration demonstrates how any future administration that is bent on pursuing deregulation can systematically undermine the regulatory process, by manipulating the science and economic analysis and adopting specific legal interpretations. The administration tampered with the scientific process, for instance, by selecting scientists who take contrarian viewpoints to head the Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee, by removing academic scientists from scientific advisory boards and by sidelining the advice of career scientists. As seen in the setting of the National Air Quality standards. it elevated contrarian viewpoints, including their narrow view of establishing causality between pollutants and public health and their amplification of uncertainty, to justify inaction on necessary public health protections. The administration also skewed economic methods and assumptions to understate the economic benefits from protecting public health and the environment. The administration chose legal interpretations to argue that federal environmental laws provide only limited public health and environmental protections and that Congress delegated only narrow protective powers for agencies. The longer-term adverse impact of the Trump Presidency is the reshaping of the judiciary. As noted by then White House Counsel Don McGahn, “The judicial selection and the deregulatory effort are really the flip side of the same coin.” Interestingly, the administration cherry picked when to pursue deregulation. It imposed regulations on the non-fossil private sector to block their prudent decision-making when the profits of oil and gas companies were at stake. Rebuilding and strengthening these regulatory guardrails are critical for public health and environmental protection.
