The delays are fueling concern among both outside activists and Washington insiders, who warn that federal agencies face a narrow window to finalize enduring climate actions before the end of the president’s first term.
Perhaps their biggest concern centers on the Environmental Protection Agency, which this month pushed back its self-imposed deadlines for several new regulations.
“It is imperative to get them done as soon as possible,” Christine Todd Whitman, a Republican who led the EPA during George W. Bush’s first term, told Tim. “It’s not a quick process. We’re falling behind very fast on our ability to slow things down and have an impact.”
Here are three challenges that have contributed to the delays — and one recent development that could speed things up:
The EPA faces a chronic shortage of federal workers that has only marginally improved under Biden.
- Under Donald Trump, who vowed to “make it much easier to fire rogue bureaucrats,” the EPA’s workforce fell below 14,200 people in 2018, down from 17,000 just a few years before.
- The agency has only added about 500 new employees under Biden, leaving the workforce near the lows dating back to the Reagan administration, according to agency figures.
“Despite depleted staffing levels, persistent funding challenges, and a previous administration that left the agency neglected and scientifically compromised, this Administration has finalized strong, legally durable rules,” Dan Utech, the agency’s chief of staff, said in a statement. “EPA remains committed to using all the tools available to meet the moment and advance President Biden’s bold environmental agenda.”
Then there’s the conservative majority on the Supreme Court, which could take a skeptical view of agencies’ authority to issue ambitious climate rules.
- Last summer, for instance, the high court ruled that the EPA had overstepped its authority under the Clean Air Act to curb carbon emissions from power plants.
- In the majority opinion in West Virginia v. EPA, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote that agencies cannot issue such sweeping regulations without clear authorization from Congress.
“It’s like the EPA lawyers were writing on an Etch A Sketch and then West Virginia v. EPA came along and shook it up, and then they had to start all over again,” James Goodwin, a senior policy analyst with the Center for Progressive Reform, a liberal think tank, told The Climate 202.
The agency’s attorneys are probably trying to craft “bulletproof” regulations that can survive future legal challenges, even if it takes more time to do so, Goodwin added.
The last possible reason for the delays has to do with the changing economics of clean energy.
- The recently passed climate law, dubbed the Inflation Reduction Act, will cause the cost of renewable energy to decline dramatically over the next decade, modeling suggests.
- That will bolster the economic argument for tougher environmental rules. But it will also require agencies to redo the cost-benefit analyses that justify stricter standards, Christy Goldfuss, the chief policy impact officer at the Natural Resources Defense Council, told Tim.
That adds months more legwork to the process, said Goldfuss, who led the White House Council on Environmental Quality during the Obama administration.
One recent development could accelerate the…
Read More: Here’s why Biden is ‘falling behind’ on environmental rules
