New Year, New Environment?

that happened over the last twelve months. Not us. Here at Bloomberg Environment, we're constantly looking forward. No year in review for us. We do year ahead. So in keeping with that, we invited three Bloomberg Environment reporters into our Arlington, Virginia studio to talk about the shape of things to come. And I'm joined by Abby Smith, Pat Rizzuto, and Alan Kowski.

Thanks you guys for joining us. Pat Rizzuto, Hello, Pat is our chemicals reporter and she had a pretty big busy year in twenty seventeen and twenty eighteen could be us is busy, although frankly I was a little surprised that so much happened on the chemicals beat in twenty seventeen. Because in twenty sixteen we had this big new toxic chemicals law that Congress passed the President signed. I thought, I guess, maybe naively, that that would be sort of the end of the story, But it seems like it

was just the beginning. What happened with this new chemicals law? And why hasn't the story ended? So to speak? Well, it's a brand new law, and so anytime you've got a brand new law, you've got a whole lot of things to do to implement that law. And to Ebo's credit, it has met every single deadline that was in that law. And there were a ton of deadlines in that law, very very aggressive ones. And this is for an office in the Agency that had very very few deadlines before

this law. So the story in twenty seventeen was, you know, EPA beating the deadlines. Will they won't they? But it sounds like in twenty eighteen the story will be lawsuits over this new law. Can you talk a little bit about that? Absolutely, And that's sort of a natural progression.

I mean, any law in the US is partly what Congress says, partly how the agency interprets what Congress says, and then what the courts say about how the agency interpreted what Congress said, and that whole stew of factors creates law, and so there was never a question that there were going to be lawsuits filed. It was simply

a matter of who would file the lawsuits. If I'm a company that makes chemicals that are covered under this new law, chemicals that are potentially toxic, when will I fully know exactly what I have to comply with and the requirements that I'm going to have to operate under, Because right now it seems like there's so much there's so little clarity about what these companies are going to have to be doing under this law. Absolutely for the

foreseeable future. There's a lot of regulatory uncertainty. But the best advice is always you know, they have to follow the rules that EPA has issued. So EPA has laid out its plan, but within that there's always lots of different ways the agency can choose to implement its regulations. Will the agency require companies to develop data that can cost a lot of money. So far, there's no indication

that the agency will. Will the agency require companies to dig through their files and at least hand over data they already have maybe it'll do that. Still no indications so far, so there's it's going to be quite a while before there's enough of a track record for companies to know what to do. But it sounds like overall, you know, we're I guess, give or take a year and a half after the bill was passed, and the dust, so to speak, still hasn't really settled on this new law,

not at all. But by twenty nineteen next year, I think there'll be some really concrete developments. Well that's I guess. The agenda for next year's podcast has already been set. For the twenty nineteen outlook, We're going to take a quick break right now. But first I actually wanted to mention a hashtag that you can use if you wanted to comment on this or other episodes. That hashtag is parts per B And so if you go on Twitter and use the hashtag parts per b, you can comment

on this or other episodes. Once again, that is parts per B And we hope to see you online. All right, and we're back and we're talking about twenty eighteen and what the year may hold for the environment. And I'm here with Abby, who covers climate change, for or Bloomberg environment.

Has the Trump administration at least started to dismantle I guess, like every part of the Obama climate legacy is there are there some parts, you know, some policies that were enacted during the Obama years that they just said, you know, we're okay with that, We're going to let that, you know, stay in place. It's a good question. I think a lot of the big name policies they have started to dismantle.

You have the Clean Power Plan, You've got the Companion rule for new power plants, You've got rules limiting methane from new oil and gas drills. But there are some that have kind of flown under the radar so far. One of those, an example is the policy to regulate hydrofluor carbons or hfc's, which are highly potent greenhouse gas refrigerant chemicals. That has kind of flown under the radar

a little bit. There's a global agreement that the Obama administration helps put in place to reduce these called the Kigali Amendment. And it's a big open question right now whether the Trump administration will support that. They haven't really said that much about it. Another example of a policy like that is regulations of greenhouse gas emissions from aircraft, which the EPA, the Obama EPA started the process to regulate that, and for all we know that process, that

work is still underway. But you know, the Trump administration hasn't addressed that. I think in a lot of the sort of popular imagination, I guess, for lack of a better word, I think people think that the Trump administration, especially under Scott Pruitt, who leads to the EPA, is just sort of opposed to climate change or opposed to doing anything about climate change rit large. You know, they don't believe it exists. It's a hoax, maybe a Chinese hoax.

Is that really the case? Are they just do they have sort of a very kind of monolithic stance on climate change or is it a little bit more nuanced than that. I wouldn't I wouldn't say it's monolithic at all. I mean, I think that this administration's stance on climate

change is complicated and it's not necessarily clear. I think there's a lot of focus on whether the present or others in the administration, like Scott Pruitt or like Energy Secretary Rick Perry, believe in the science of human cause climate change. But you know, I think it's telling to take a look at some of the other commons Trump

administration officials have made. I've sat through many Scott Pruitt speeches, and he often likes to note that the United States greenhouse gas emissions are at pre nineteen ninety four levels, and the bulk of that reduction, he says, has come through American innovation and not by way of government regulation. Yeah, and I guess, like, you know, if he believed the climate change wasn't really a thing, then he wouldn't be

citing that. You know, it wouldn't matter what greenhouse gas emissions were, what levels were at right your spot on it. You know, if officials also say that the US will continue to reduce greenhouse gas emissions through innovation and technology, well that begs the question why do you think it's so important to reduce greenhouse gases? That totally conflicts with

the whole climate changes of poex position. So it's sort of it's almost like, you know, we're doing we're doing a great job on reducing greenhouse gas emissions, but we don't really need to go that much further because clients change isn't really a big that big of an issue. Is that a fair characterization, right? And I think that you have to remember too that you know, there's a lot of big hype every time President Trump goes to Twitter and talks about good old global warming. The policy

position is much clearer. I mean, the administration is already made clear they don't intend to make this a priority. So you know, they don't intend to be a player on this issue on the international stage. They're not climate leaders like the Obama administration had worked so hard to be.

You know, this isn't a policy priority for them. So I think that you know, every time an administration official takes to Twitter and talks about climate change, and you know, you got these news cycles where it's does he or won't he? Or will here won't he? I think that you have to remember there's already plenty of evidence that the agency's you know, EPA, Energy Department, Interior Department, other agencies that this administration doesn't intend to put any emphasis

on climate unless they're forced to. It's sort of a look at what they do now, what they say kind of a we're talking about twenty eighteen and what the year may hold for the environment and I'm here with my colleague Alan Kowski, who is a Bloomberg Environment's Energy and Natural Resources reporter, and Allan had a really fascinating story about this committee that has been set up in the Department of the Interior that could really change the way that oil and gas companies who operate on federal

lands operate, I guess, so to speak. So can you tell us a little bit about this committee that that and what it's set up to do and who's on it. Yeah, the committee is reviewing financial policies that include, most prominently royalties charged to companies working on federal lands and Indian lands, and they're going they're going to review the whole question of what rights are appropriate, should we change them, raise them,

lower them? And do you you know, I guess we don't know what's going to be you know, what's going to come out of the committee, But do you anticipate that these the aggregate costs you mentioned will go up or down for these companies? If they're going to be more flexible about it, they can look at areas that are less attractive and say maybe we need lower royalties there, at least down to the minimum the federal government permits

which is twelve and a half percent. They can look at other areas that are more attractive and say, we can justify setting higher royalties there, So there can be more flexibility than has been shown in recent decades. So in other words, they want to set them as high as possible without being so high that they discourage people from using these lands exactly, And there are a lot of arguments over whether and to what extent that may

already happen. There are some companies that avoid federal lands, not just because of the royalties. Those are not the big issue, but the total cost of all the financial considerations and the regulatory burdens, the environmental regulations especially, and the litigation that sometimes comes with it. So some companies avoid federal lands prefer state or private lands, and that becomes a question of how do we smooth all this out. What the Trump administration tends to say is we want

to actually be a better business partner. If we're going to deal with these people, we want to deal with them in a way that makes more sense for them and us at the same time. Finally, you know, I wanted to take a step back and take a look at what the fact that this committee even exists. What does that mean about how Ryan Zinki, who's the Secretary of the Interior, what does that mean about how he views his role? You know, since stepping into the to

the position earlier I guess in twenty seventeen. You know, he's reforming the way that this department operates in this way, but he's also kind of taken a lot of other measures to reform the department. I mean, does he see himself as kind of a big change agent or you know, is it different than that? Definitely a change agent. It comes back to that idea of wanting to be a good business partner. The idea being that if we're going to do this, let's do it in a way that

is smoothed out as much as possible. And is there evidence that Zinki has been successful or will be successful. It's sort of change being this bringing wholesale change to the Department of in the Interior. Still too soon to say,

there's a lot of more optimistic talk. But for instance, the Royalty Committee will be coming out with its recommendations over the course of twenty eighteen, and then if the Interior Secretary decides to go with those recommendations, then we'll come the implementations and then we'll see whether this works. So far, it's more a matter of people being friendly. Speaking of people being friendly, i'd like to thank you three of my friends for coming here. That will do it.

You just heard from Alan Kovsky, pat Rizzuto, and Abby Smith talking about their views on twenty eighteen. For much, much, much more of their reporting, visit our website at bnanews dot BNA dot com. Today's episode was produced by myself with help from Jessica Coombs and Rachel Dagel. Special help today came from RJ. Jewel. The music tracks for this episode are a Message in Europa by Bazaar. They were

used under Creative Comments license. More information can be found at Better with Music dot com