Point of Order: Buzz from the Beehive - 4/10/24

Casey Costello (at long last) shows the information which she regarded as superior to the advice which Treasury gave her

Point of Order waited patiently for it to be posted on the Beehive website.

But no. Associate Health Minister Casey Costello has released her “independent advice” on heated tobacco products, but – at time of writing – she has not yet posted it on the official government website.

H. Sterling Burnett: US EPA - Meet the New Boss, Same as the Old

Administrator Scott Pruitt's resignation from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) marked the end of a productive but tumultuous time at the agency, but when it comes to policy, the new acting administrator, Andrew Wheeler, is likely to stay the course.

However history judges Pruitt’s tenure at EPA, critics and supporters of Pruitt can agree EPA under Pruitt began a fundamental transformation of its operations. 

Ending sue-and-settle agreements; reshaping EPA’s science advisory committees to better reflect diversity of geography, experience, and points of view; reducing the chance of graft by halting those who make EPA research funding decisions from also receiving funding for their research; beginning to roll back myriad regulatory actions, including the Clean Power Plan, the Waters of the United States (WOTUS) rule, the massive increase in the Corporate Fuel Economy Standard (CAFE), and various energy efficiency mandates for appliances, EPA began changing the way it did business.

Richard Epstein from the US: The EPA Gets High on Greenhouse Gases

The key event in the Environmental Protection Agency’s campaign to regulate carbon dioxide as a pollutant came on April 2, 2007. It was the Supreme Court’s decision in Massachusetts v. Environmental Protection Agency. Justice John Paul Stevens, writing for a five-member majority, held that the EPA had a duty to decide whether greenhouse gas emissions from new vehicles are contributing to “air pollution which may reasonably be anticipated to endanger public health or welfare.”

Six years later, the apocalyptic predictions about global warming have not been borne out, notwithstanding the dire rhetoric of Justice Stevens’s opinion. The earth’s temperature has remained stable in the face of increasing concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Indeed, according to measurements from the Climatic Research Unit of the University of East Anglia, “The Earth's average temperature warmed by 1.4ºF (0.8ºC) between the 1850s and 2000s, mostly during 1911-1944 and 1976-1998”—before the upsurge of carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere over the last 15 years.