Axios: “The Fallout from EPA’s Pollution Shift”
A recent RFF blog post and Senior Fellow Bryan Hubbell contribute to this article about the US Environmental Protection Agency’s recent shift on benefit-cost analysis.
“It breaks with decades of practices, though scholars with the think tank Resources For the Future (RFF) note a limited number of Trump 1.0 decisions excluded various benefit tallies ... ‘Such an approach tilts the analysis in favor of less stringent regulation,’ two RFF senior fellows said in a new post ...
The intrigue: The effect of no longer estimating PM2.5 and ozone benefits will depend on what kind of regulatory change is under consideration, a former longtime EPA official now with RFF said.
- RFF senior fellow Bryan Hubbell said it doesn’t have a ‘direct impact’ on the legality of decisions around national air quality standards.
- ‘But it does affect the ability to talk to the public about what it means to set standards, and what the implications of meeting those standards will be for their health,’ said Hubbell, who was at EPA for 27 years until mid-2025.”
