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Articles by Michael A. Livermore

Michael A. Livermore is the executive director of the Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University School of Law. He is the author, with Richard L. Revesz, of Retaking Rationality: How Cost-Benefit Analysis Can Better Protect the Environmental and Our Health.

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  • Economics of climate legislation deserve honest accounting

    The debate over the Kerry-Boxer bill has picked up where Waxman-Markey left off: the economics of climate legislation. Perhaps empowered by the “death panel” misinformation campaign, climate bill obstructionists are reviving rumors of economic disaster in the hopes of panicking the public and eviscerating or blocking final legislation. Just as no one was every going […]

  • Counting the benefits of climate legislation

    While reducing greenhouse gases will have costs, so will the results of climate change. That may seem obvious, but up until now the debate over climate legislation has only focused on the costs, without looking at the benefits. Last week, a federal interagency taskforce released preliminary findings that began to set a dollar value for […]

  • The senator from Montana and the middle class

    This morning, the Senate took its final step on climate change before its summer vacation—a hearing pulled together by Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus from Montana on how carbon allowances are allocated under the Waxman-Markey bill. The main takeaway: Under the House bill, the middle class does the heavy lifting to pay for the […]

  • Small changes at EPA could have big environmental impacts

    While climate change legislation works its way toward 60 votes in the Senate, President Obama’s EPA has been quietly working on some serious revisions to the guidelines it uses to conduct cost-benefit analysis.  Tweaks they might make to the powerful but low-profile Guidelines for Preparing Economic Analyses could have major impacts on the environment and […]