CleanLaw

"The progress is uneven. We are not cleaning the air in an even way for everybody." In this episode our executive director Joe Goffman speaks with Francesca Dominici, Professor of Biostatistics, Population, and Data Science at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Co-Director of the Harvard Data Science Initiative. They discuss her team’s state-of-the-art science that shows air pollution continues to be a public health threat and, links air pollution with increased coronavirus death rates. They also discuss her team’s recent study revealing that even as air quality improved overall between 2010 and 2016, it did not improve in Black communities. Transcript of this episode here: https://eelp.law.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/CleanLaw-47-Joe-and-Francesca-COVID.pdf

In this episode Joe Goffman speaks with Sam Ricketts, senior fellow for Energy and Environment at the Center for American Progress and former climate director for the presidential campaign of Govrnor Jay Inslee. He now also serves as a co-founder of Evergreen, an organization created by Inslee campaign alumni to continue to deploy the policy, communications, and organizing tools of a political campaign in service to the climate movement. They discuss Sam’s experience developing comprehensive climate change policy proposals, how he and his colleagues thought through the problems they had to address, and how to think about the climate change policy proposals recently unveiled in the U.S. House of Representatives and by the Biden campaign. Transcript https://eelp.law.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/CleanLaw-46-Joe-Sam-Climate-Change-Policies.pdf

Hana Vizcarra speaks with Kevin McClean, former Associate General Counsel for EPA’s Pesticides and Toxic Substances Law Office, about chemical substances regulation and implementation of the 2016 revisions to the Toxic Substances Control Act. Transcript here https://eelp.law.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/CleanLaw-45-Hana-and-Kevin-McLean-TSCA-Lautenberg.pdf Kevin's paper on TSCA after the Lautenberg Act here https://eelp.law.harvard.edu/three-years-after-where-does-implementation-of-the-lautenberg-act-stand/ eelp.law.harvard.edu

Recorded on May 7, Joe Goffman speaks with Cynthia Giles, former Assistant Administrator for EPA’s Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance, about EPA’s rollback of environmental enforcement in a COVID-19 enforcement discretion policy issued at the end of March 2020. This issue is still playing out: three lawsuits are pending about the March enforcement policy, and EPA has given some additional guidance on the subject. On June 29, 2020, EPA announced that it plans to end the COVID-19 enforcement discretion policy on August 31, 2020. Transcript here https://eelp.law.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/CleanLaw-44-Joe-and-Cynthia-on-EPA-Covid-19-enforcement-discretion.pdf

In this episode Ari Peskoe speaks with Leah Stokes, Professor of Political Science at UC Santa Barbara about state clean energy policies. Transcript https://eelp.law.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/CleanLaw-43-Ari-and-Leah-Stokes-on-Interest-Groups-and-Utilities.pdf

Ari Peskoe, Director of our Electricity Law Initiative, describes a petition filed at FERC by a group calling itself the New England Ratepayers Association requesting that FERC find state-regulated net metering arrangements violate federal law and are therefore invalid. If FERC were to grant NERA’s petition, utilities across the country would likely press state regulators to change the rules that have facilitated recent dramatic growth in rooftop solar. We made this recording at a press event on June 10th, and these were Ari’s opening remarks. You can read more about this petition here https://eelp.law.harvard.edu/cleanlaw-electricity-law-initiative-files-comment-in-opposition-to-net-metering-petition/ Transcript https://eelp.law.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Transcript-of-Ari-Pesko-on-FERC-filing-6-10-20.pdf

Caitlin McCoy is joined by Bethany Davis Noll, Litigation Director at the Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University Law School. They discuss the recently-finalized Safer Affordable Fuel-Efficient Vehicles Rule, which weakens fuel economy and GHG standards for cars and light trucks. They share some insights into the rule and how it could be challenged. A transcript of this episode is available here https://eelp.law.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/CleanLaw-41-Caitlin-and-Bethany-vehicle-emissions-fuel-efficiency-rollbacks.pdf

In this episode Alex Griswold, a research associate at the Harvard University Center for the Environment, interviews Professor Jody Freeman, our founding director and also an independent director of ConocoPhillips. They talk about the Trump-era environmental rollbacks that are most troubling to Jody, and why she is still optimistic that we can do better. Transcript https://eelp.law.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/CleanLaw-40-Jody-Alex-rollbacks-and-optimism_.pdf

Joe Goffman interviews Harvard Law Professor Richard Lazarus about his new book, "The Rule of Five," which describes the drama, strategy, cast of characters, and, above all, the lawyering, by both the litigators and the Justices, that led to the seminal Supreme Court decision in Massachusetts v. EPA. Transcript https://eelp.law.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/39-Goffman-Lazarus-Transcript.pdf

For a transcript of this episode see here https://eelp.law.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/38-Goffman-Bloomer-Transcript.pdf EELP Fellow Laura Bloomer speaks with our Executive Director Joe Goffman about how the Trump Administration is using regulatory rollbacks to advance new interpretations of the Clean Air Act that restrict EPA’s authority to address climate change and threaten the agency’s long-term ability to deliver needed reductions in air pollution. Laura and Joe analyze four rulemakings: (1) the repeal of the Clean Power Plan and its replacement with the Affordable Clean Energy Rule, (2) the revocation of California’s preemption waiver for its greenhouse gas tailpipe emissions standards and its Zero Emissions Vehicle program, (3) the proposed withdrawal and replacement of the “appropriate and necessary” finding that underpins the Mercury and Air Toxic Standards, and (4) the proposed rescission of methane regulations for the oil and natural gas sector. See here for links to the individual rules https://eelp.law.harvard.edu/cleanlaw-restricting-epas-authority-joe-goffman-and-laura-bloomer-talk-clean-air-act-rollbacks/