Last week, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Scott Pruitt announced a proposed rulemaking, which, if finalized, would repeal the Clean Power Plan–the regulatory centerpiece of President Obama’s domestic climate change policy. As required by executive order and by statute, EPA originally issued the Clean Power Plan in 2015 only after preparing a regulatory impact analysis which included estimates of the social costs and benefits of the plan. The agency’s analysis estimated that the Clean Power Plan would deliver net social benefits in the tens of billions of dollars.
Opinion column by Stuart Shapiro