EPA entered into a proposed settlement agreement in Ecology Center v. U.S. EPA, No. 23-70158 (9th Cir.), that would resolve all claims in the case by establishing deadlines for EPA to take final action regarding a rulemaking under TSCA regulating lead wheel weights.
EPA announced a 60-day public comment period associated with release of the draft IRIS Toxicological Review of Perfluorononanoic Acid and Related Salts.
EPA announced the availability of and seeks comment on a draft document titled “EPA Criteria for Product Category Rules to Support the Label Program for Low Embodied Carbon Construction Materials.”
Today's climate impacts and those on the horizon increasingly infuse mitigation and adaptation efforts with urgency, causing policymakers to contemplate or issue formal declarations of a climate emergency and to streamline review processes to aid rapid development of mitigation and adaptation infrastructure and technology. Yet, this urgency and need have the potential to create injustice and sideline or overwhelm efforts to reduce existing injustice.
Many environmental law paradigms focus on fixed points. Sometimes, the fixed points are in the past, and environmental laws call upon us to look at a baseline or previous state of nature and compare our actions against it. Other approaches call for us to consider an ideal state and develop strategies regarding how to reach it. In a 4° Celsius world, both strategies fail. Adhering to baselines is meaningless and striving for goals that are unachievable may lead to paralysis.
Last September, the Biden Administration announced the American Climate Corps, a workforce training and service initiative with the goal of giving young people skills-based training for careers in the clean energy, conservation, and climate resilience sectors. The initiative will offer 20,000 Americans paid training in a variety of environmental fields, specifically prioritize equity and environmental justice, and collaborate with federal agencies, nonprofit organizations, and tribal, state, and local governments.
EPA proposed to remove polytetrafluoroethylene from the current list of inert ingredients approved for use in food use and nonfood use pesticide products because it has been identified as a per- and polyfluoroalkyl substance that is no longer used in any registered pesticide product.
EPA announced the availability of and seeks comment on the draft document titled "Technical Documentation for the Framework for Evaluating Damages and Impacts (FrEDI)," which provides technical documentation of a framework used to analyze future climate change-related impacts to the United States, projected to occur across multiple impact sector categories, geographic regions, and populations, under any custom temperature scenario.
EPA amended the 2018 final rule that established fees for the administration of TSCA.
EPA announced the availability of and seeks comment on the Draft Inventory of U.S. Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Sinks: 1990-2022.