Joseph Goffman – Page 3 – Environmental and Energy Law Program

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In the Media

Trump, Biden Square Off Over Environmental Regulations

“The administration came into office with an unnervingly good understanding of how the machinery of regulation works and they did a pretty effective job of sabotaging it,” said Joe Goffman, executive director of the Environmental & Energy Law Program at Harvard Law School. The approach will make it tougher for a new administration to carry out its objectives.

July 20, 2020

In the Media

Trump Slashed a Major Environmental Rule. That’s Just the Beginning.

“If they meet their schedule, virtually every big ticket item will be across the finish line,” says Harvard University’s Joseph Goffman, who was a senior clean air attorney under the Obama EPA.

July 16, 2020

In the Media

How Joe Biden Could Undo Trump’s Damage to Environment

“The biggest, flashiest thing would be for Biden to stand up on day one and say the U.S. is recommitting itself to Paris,” says Jody Freeman, director of the Harvard program. “We should make clear we’re going to take back the reins we’ve relinquished.”

It wouldn’t necessarily be easy. The U.S. would not simply be permitted to rejoin the agreement but would have to negotiate its way back in. One way to improve its chances would be for the U.S. to present an even more ambitious greenhouse-gas reduction target than it had before, says Joseph Goffman, the Harvard program’s executive director.

July 10, 2020

In the Media

LGBT rights ruling: ‘Potent new precedent’ on climate?

Gorsuch’s decision in Bostock follows a similar logic path to the opinion in the watershed climate case Massachusetts v. EPA, said Joe Goffman, executive director of Harvard University’s environmental law program.

June 22, 2020

In the Media

Trump and EPA Have Been Making Controversial Decisions Over America’s Air Quality During Coronavirus Pandemic

“What the Trump EPA has done with this attack on the mercury standards is to unleash a very clear agenda to ignore the benefits of reducing all forms of air pollution,” Joseph Goffman, a former senior counsel at EPA under the Obama administration, who now runs the Environmental & Energy Law Program at Harvard, told The Allegheny Front radio show.

June 22, 2020

In the Media

Law and Environmental Policy Advocacy with Joseph Goffman of Harvard Law’s EELP | Episode 461

Joe Goffman joins The Great Battlefield podcast to talk about his career working on environmental legislation and how the Harvard Environmental and Energy Law program is tracking the rollbacks at EPA.

May 22, 2020

In the Media

Trump uses virus to permanently suspend rules on industry

Joe Goffman, former chief counsel for EPA’s air office under Obama, said in an email to E&E News last night that the agency’s obligations and authorities are defined by statutes like the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act, “not by President Trump’s executive orders, which cannot override environmental statutes or substitute rhetorical goals like ‘streamlining’ for statutory mandates.”

May 20, 2020

In the Media

Biden floats climate Cabinet position. That’s complicated

Joseph Goffman, who served as EPA’s top lawyer on air and climate under Obama, said that besides being barred from issuing regulations, a new Cabinet official also couldn’t redirect money or make infrastructure investments approved by Congress for other agencies.

May 11, 2020

In the Media

Guess what: It’s no longer ‘appropriate or necessary’ to regulate mercury emissions from power plants

Joe Goffman, a former EPA administrator, agrees.

“The EPA reached the position that it is not ‘appropriate and necessary’ to regulate power plant mercury emissions by cooking up an illegal reading of the Clean Air Act, willfully misreading a Supreme Court case, and deciding that it is suddenly free to dismiss the benefits of the full measure of pollution reduced by regulation in performing cost-benefit analysis,” Goffman said in a statement. “The immediate effect of this action will likely be coal industry litigation aimed at removing existing control requirements for mercury and air toxic emissions.”

April 27, 2020