STATES TAKE THE LEAD IN FIGHTING ENVIRONMENTAL ROLLBACKS

As the Trump administration mounts a wide-scale assault on environmental protections, a powerful group of officeholders is working to create an effective firewall: state attorneys general.

State attorneys general are stepping into the breach at a critical time. The new Administration has sought to delay, revise and rescind dozens of existing environmental protections. Clean air and clean water safeguards are among the Administration’s targets. So are public lands protections that successive Presidents have put in place under long-standing legal authority. The Administration’s denial of climate change, its aggressive promotion of fossil fuels, and its puzzling antipathy toward the booming clean energy sector, also threaten to undo years of bipartisan progress in advancing public health and sustainable resource development.

State attorneys general who have the responsibility to protect the health and welfare of their citizens, and to act as stewards of their states’ public trust resources, are uniquely positioned to engage the courts and defend our hard-won legal rights. They know that the law does not allow existing legal protections to be ignored or set aside willy-nilly. Proposed changes must go through the same type of fact- and science-based public processes that generated the protections in the first place. No short cuts permitted.

State attorneys general already have successfully challenged the most egregious efforts to rollback important environmental protections. When state attorneys general intervened to contest EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt’s efforts to lift limits on smog-forming emissions, for example, EPA quickly retreated. Likewise, state attorneys general have won early battles against Administration efforts to deep six anti-pollution efforts in the oil and gas and energy efficiency sectors.

More fights to protect long-standing, shared environmental and public health values and the rule of law lie ahead. The stakes are high. The same EPA leadership that denies climate change already is trying to avoid its legal obligation to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases. It also is threatening to reverse public health gains by revisiting air pollution limits that have demonstrably lowered premature mortality, cardiovascular disease and asthma.

Meanwhile, the Interior Department’s leadership is running roughshod over public lands legal protections. Secretary Zinke is days away from recommending that the President bypass Congress and reduce or rescind duly authorized national monuments. Meanwhile, the Department is extending public lands giveaways to the coal, oil, and gas industries by squashing royalty reforms and long-overdue environmental reviews. In similar fashion, the Energy Department is tilting its budgets, programs, and regulatory responsibilities to favor fossil fuels over clean, renewable energy.

Other early signs from the Administration are equally troubling. There has been a sharp decline in federal enforcement of environmental laws. Administration budget requests would cripple Great Lakes, Chesapeake Bay, and other critical environmental restoration efforts, and zero out Energy Department clean energy R&D programs that have enjoyed strong, bipartisan support. The list goes on.

The magnitude of the threat to the rule of law, and to critically important environmental and public health values, is taxing the resources of state attorneys general.

Some help is on the way. This week, the NYU School of Law announced the formation of the State Energy & Environmental Impact Center (State Impact Center). The non-partisan State Impact Center’s mission is to support state attorneys general who are promoting clean energy, climate change and environmental laws and policies, regardless political party.

The new non-partisan State Impact Center will work with interested state attorneys general by sponsoring NYU Fellows who will work directly in state attorneys general offices on clean energy, climate, and environmental matters; by helping to coordinate efforts across multiple state offices on matters of regional and national significance; and by drawing public attention to the important work undertaken by state attorneys general. The Center is funded by a generous grant from Bloomberg Philanthropies.

We should all be thankful for those state attorneys general and their staffs who have prioritized the protection of our environmental and public health values in all of their manifestations. By taking affirmative action to protect our clean air and water, confront climate change, promote clean energy, and insist on sound stewardship of our incomparable public lands, state attorneys general give us hope that the rule of law, and our shared environmental and public health values, will prevail.