Joseph Goffman – Environmental and Energy Law Program

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In the Media

Clean Air Act gets boost as court dumps Trump carbon rule

Asked for a comment on yesterday’s court decision, Joseph Goffman, who played a key role in crafting the Clean Power Plan and is part of the EPA transition team for the incoming Biden administration, sent E&E News a link to a recording by the Royal Choral Society of the “Hallelujah” chorus from George Frideric Handel’s “Messiah.”

January 25, 2021

In the Media

7 Ways Biden Can Fight Climate Change Without Any Help from Congress

Last year I looked at the ways an incoming president could deliver results in the likelihood the 2021 Congress isn’t on board with Green New Deal advocates’ aggressive reimagining of the economy. Harvard Environmental and Energy Law Program Executive Director Joseph Goffman, a former Obama EPA official, told me then that one of the markers of “an incoming president’s actual seriousness” would be to come in with a plan that identifies “all the tools the executive branch has to promote climate solutions and clean energy.”

November 24, 2020

In the Media

Did Trump manage to saw through the red tape?

“The administration went about its business methodically,” said Joe Goffman, executive director of Harvard Law School’s Environmental & Energy Law Program. “What the leadership at EPA and Interior did was change the role in which scientific experts played in the administration process.”

November 5, 2020

In the Media

‘Everything related to the environment is at stake’

Joseph Goffman, executive director of the Environmental and Energy Law Program at Harvard, who has also served in numerous environmental roles in government, called the Trump administration approach to weakening environmental rules “horrifying.”

November 2, 2020

In the Media

Trump’s EPA rewrote the rules on air, water energy. Now voters face a choice on climate change issues

“The obvious thing (the rules) do is weaken pollution standards, or weaken environmental protections,” said Joseph Goffman, a former assistant administrator at the EPA and now the executive director of the Environmental & Energy Law Program at Harvard University. “As they go into effect, the public is exposed to more pollution, more environmental damage, more emissions of greenhouse gases, than they otherwise would be exposed to thanks to these rules.”

October 29, 2020

In the Media

No, Biden Won’t Ban Fracking

And even if he wanted to ban all fracking, he couldn’t. According to Harvard’s Joseph Goffman, the EPA’s former top climate attorney, the president wouldn’t have the executive power unless Congress passed a new law.

October 27, 2020

In the Media

Environmentalists sound alarm over Barrett’s climate change comments

Joseph Goffman, executive director of Harvard Law’s Environmental and Energy Law Program, warned that if the clean energy rule case made it to the Supreme Court, industry briefings on the power plant rule could lead to questions on a court precedent that established the EPA’s authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions.

October 16, 2020

In the Media

D.C. Circuit showdown over Trump carbon rule begins

“What really heightens the risk for the government is that you have two judges on the panel that heard not just the agency making a different argument, but — even if in the end they didn’t agree with the 2016 version of the agency’s argument — they certainly spent a lot of time themselves examining the play in the joints [of the statute],” said Joe Goffman, executive director of the Environmental & Energy Law Program at Harvard University Law School and a key architect of the CPP.

October 9, 2020

In the Media

Amy Coney Barrett on Court Seen Handcuffing Agencies’ Climate-Change Fight

A Supreme Court that’s more skeptical of agency authority could look kindly on Trump administration rewrites of federal rules limiting the federal government’s reach when it comes to clean water oversight and required environmental analysis. With Barrett’s confirmation, the court is more likely to “embrace those more self-limited interpretations,” said Joe Goffman, executive director of Harvard Law School’s Enivronmental and Energy Law Program.

October 9, 2020