Author: U.s Environmental Protection Agency Publisher: CreateSpace ISBN: 9781500105983 Category : Nature Languages : en Pages : 100
Book Description
This is our report on the subject evaluation conducted by the Office of Inspector General (OIG) of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). This report contains findings that describe the problems the OIG has identified and corrective actions the OIG recommends. This report represents the opinion of the OIG and does not necessarily represent the final EPA position. Final determinations on matters in this report will be made by EPA managers in accordance with established audit resolution procedures.
Author: Arthur A. Elkins, Jr. Publisher: ISBN: 9781437979725 Category : Languages : en Pages : 92
Book Description
On Dec. 15, 2009, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) published its Endangerment and Causes or Contribute Findings for Greenhouse Gases under Section 202(a) of the Clean Air Act. As the primary scientific basis for EPA's finding, the Agency relied upon assessments conducted by other organizations. EPA summarized the results of these and other scientific asssessments in a technical support document (TSD). On April 7, 2010, the Ranking Member, Senate Comm. on Environment and Public Works, requested that the Office of Inspector Gen. (OIG) conduct a review of the process the EPA used to make and support its greenhouse gases endangerment finding. Thhis report determines whether EPA followed key federal and Agency regulations and policies in obtaining, developing, and reviewing the technical data used to make and support its greenhouse gases endangerment finding. Figures and tables. This is a print on demand report.
Author: Lawrence A. Kogan Publisher: ISBN: Category : Languages : en Pages : 0
Book Description
This working paper explains in detail how the Information Quality Act and implementing guidelines from the Office of Management and Budget provide a procedural law mechanism to ensure the objectivity, quality, utility, integrity and reproducibility of highly influential scientific assessments developed by federal agencies and third parties, which agencies in turn “disseminate” as support for major agency regulations. OMB's guidelines, which are binding on all federal agencies, inter alia impose rigorous, uniform, peer-review process standards that govern agency peer-reviewer selection and retention practices. The guidelines also govern agencies' public disclosure obligations with respect to the data, computational and computer program inputs, assumptions, and applications that are incorporated into the assessments. In addition, OMB's guidelines require federal agencies to provide adequate administrative review mechanisms to ensure that affected persons can seek correction of agency-disseminated HISAs that agencies failed to adequately validate. Given the highly technical and specialized nature and characteristics of HISAs and the data on which they are based, the IQA and OMB's IQA guidelines anticipate that specialized review procedures separate and apart from ordinary APA notice-and-comment procedures, must be utilized under certain circumstances. The Environmental Protection Agency (“EPA”)'s 2009 Clean Air Act Section 202(a) Greenhouse Gas (“GHG”) Endangerment Findings and the decision-making process that led to the Findings, offer an ideal case study in how the IQA applies in the rulemaking context and how agencies can contravene the law. EPA's review of climate-science assessments disseminated in support of the Endangerment Findings were subject to four distinct IQA legal obligations, none of which EPA satisfied. These obligations related to: EPA-developed and peer-reviewed HISAs; third-party-developed and peer-reviewed HISAs; EPA's peer review of the Technical Support Document accompanying the Endangerment Findings that summarized and synthesized the numerous HISAs supporting them into a new HISA; and EPA's improper treatment of IQA stakeholder requests for correction. EPA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (“NOAA”) failed to ensure that the peer reviews of the HISAs satisfied the IQA's most rigorous peer-reviewer independence, conflict-of-interest, and panel-balance standards. As the working paper explains, businesses and other stakeholders unsuccessfully sought correction of the faulty peer review processes employed to validate the scientific assessments supporting the Endangerment Findings, and reconsideration of the Findings themselves. Such final agency action potentially gives rise to legal challenges of EPA's failure to comply with the IQA's peer-review standards and its denial of specialized review of technical correction requests outside of the routine rulemaking process. A review of similar past legal actions filed by aggrieved regulatory stakeholders reflects that federal courts have been generally skeptical of IQA “private rights of action.” Those complaints foundered on plaintiffs' standing to sue, as well as their assertion of a “positive” right to properly peer-reviewed government information. This working paper proposes an alternative approach to judicial enforcement of the IQA, one which addresses past lawsuits' shortcomings. It explains this alternative approach in the context of a challenge to EPA's and NOAA's noncompliance with the IQA in its actions leading up to EPA's GHG Endangerment Findings. The suit would seek to enjoin EPA's use of all EPA, NOAA, and other agency-developed, improperly peer reviewed HISAs supporting the Findings, as well as the regulations they have spawned, until those HISAs have been peer reviewed once again in conformance with such IQA standards.
Author: Joseph Toomey Publisher: AuthorHouse ISBN: 1468572237 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 705
Book Description
No President in living memory has entered office with a greater amount of goodwill and broad, bi-partisan support than Barack Obama. And few Presidents in living memory had arrived in Washington proclaiming such dramatically articulated vows to change the tone of politics, to usher in an era of post-partisanship in an effort to rally the nation behind his plan of enacting an ambitious program of social and economic change. He vowed to enact a broad bi-partisan agenda for health care reform, energy transformation, economic revitalization, job growth and restoration of America's standing in the world. And no President in living memory has more quickly and more completely abandoned his promises. He enacted a health care plan that far more resembled plans he had bitterly criticized his opponents for supporting rather than the one his campaign outlined His promised job growth through economic stimulus measures drove up the unemployment rate to double digits leading to millions of job losses His vows to restore fiscal probity resulted in the most ruinous deficits and public debt in U.S. history He 'green energy' program collapsed into a cesspool of crony political favoritism His vows to restore relations with hostile nations like Iran and North Korea had only deepened those nations' disdain for America Despite his harsh criticisms, Obama adopted nearly every plank in the Bush-era anti-terror policy His promise to restore science to its rightful place resulted in the most rigidly inflexible program of ideological extremism in modern memory Even more noteworthy was the fact that the new era of post-partisanship he had vowed to create in Washington resulted in the worst political gridlock in living memory. This book examines in detail hundreds of campaign promises Obama made while running for President, contrasting those with the record of failure and broken promises left in his wake. It is a story that has received too little attention - until now.
Author: National Research Council Publisher: National Academies Press ISBN: 0309159474 Category : Science Languages : en Pages : 251
Book Description
Technologies and Approaches to Reducing the Fuel Consumption of Medium- and Heavy-Duty Vehicles evaluates various technologies and methods that could improve the fuel economy of medium- and heavy-duty vehicles, such as tractor-trailers, transit buses, and work trucks. The book also recommends approaches that federal agencies could use to regulate these vehicles' fuel consumption. Currently there are no fuel consumption standards for such vehicles, which account for about 26 percent of the transportation fuel used in the U.S. The miles-per-gallon measure used to regulate the fuel economy of passenger cars. is not appropriate for medium- and heavy-duty vehicles, which are designed above all to carry loads efficiently. Instead, any regulation of medium- and heavy-duty vehicles should use a metric that reflects the efficiency with which a vehicle moves goods or passengers, such as gallons per ton-mile, a unit that reflects the amount of fuel a vehicle would use to carry a ton of goods one mile. This is called load-specific fuel consumption (LSFC). The book estimates the improvements that various technologies could achieve over the next decade in seven vehicle types. For example, using advanced diesel engines in tractor-trailers could lower their fuel consumption by up to 20 percent by 2020, and improved aerodynamics could yield an 11 percent reduction. Hybrid powertrains could lower the fuel consumption of vehicles that stop frequently, such as garbage trucks and transit buses, by as much 35 percent in the same time frame.
Author: Matthew C. Nowlin Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 1315441705 Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 247
Book Description
As the world considers how to deal with the impacts of a changing climate, it’s vital that we understand the ways in which the United States’ policymaking process addresses environmental issues. A mix of existing theory and original analysis, Environmental Policymaking in an Era of Climate Change applies recent policy scholarship to questions of environmental governance, with a particular focus on climate change. The book examines how competing political actors influence policies within and across institutions, focusing on both a macro-level, where formal bodies set the agenda, and a meso-level, where issues are contained within policy subsystems. Divided into two sections, the book incorporates insights from political science and public policy to provide the reader with a better understanding of how environmental policy decisions are made. Part I offers a framework for understanding environmental policymaking, exploring the history of environmental policy, and discussing the importance of values in environmental policy. Part II applies the framework to the issue of climate change, focusing on agenda-setting and the role of formal institutions in the policymaking process, covering topics that include Congress, the Executive and Judicial branches, and how climate change cuts across policy subsystem boundaries. By placing specific climate change case studies in a broader context, Environmental Policymaking in an Era of Climate Change will help students enrolled in political science, public administration, public policy, and environmental studies courses – as well as all those interested in the impacts of policy on climate change – to understand what is, and will likely continue to be, one of the most pressing policy issues of our time.
Author: Richard H. Fallon, JR. Publisher: Foundation Press ISBN: 9781599414713 Category : Law Languages : en Pages : 324
Book Description
This 2008 Supplement updates the main text with recent developments. Topics discussed include the development and structure of the federal judicial system; cases and controversies; the original jurisdiction of the Supreme Court; the distribution of judicial power among federal and state courts; review of state court decisions by the Supreme Court; civil actions in the district courts; federal common law; jurisdiction of the district courts; suits challenging official action; limitations on district court jurisdiction; federal habeas corpus; problems of district court jurisdiction; and appellate review of federal decisions.
Author: John McPhee Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux ISBN: 0374708630 Category : Nature Languages : en Pages : 258
Book Description
The narratives in this book are of journeys made in three wildernesses - on a coastal island, in a Western mountain range, and on the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon. The four men portrayed here have different relationships to their environment, and they encounter each other on mountain trails, in forests and rapids, sometimes with reserve, sometimes with friendliness, sometimes fighting hard across a philosophical divide.
Author: U.s Environmental Protection Agency
Author: Arthur A. Elkins, Jr.
Author: 
Author: Lawrence A. Kogan
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Author: Joseph Toomey
Author: National Research Council
Author: Matthew C. Nowlin
Author: Richard H. Fallon, JR.
Author: John McPhee