Over the last two decades, natural resource scientists, managers, and policymakers have increasingly endorsed “adaptive management” of land and natural resources. Indeed, this approach, based on adaptive implementation of resource management and pollution control laws, is now mandated in a...

The natural disasters of 2017-19 have exposed weaknesses in our preparation for disaster and climate change. What if we had paid attention — before disaster ensued — to how environmental protection and planning can prevent and minimize the harm that disasters cause to people, their housing,...

Every year, a number of major industrial catastrophes occur in the United States. They often result in tragic losses in terms of human life and environmental degradation. They also produce substantial losses for the U.S. economy, sidelining industrial capacity and wasting millions, if not...

When President Obama came to the White House and put his appointees in place, they faced a long to-do list. For the preceding eight years, the dominant view within the Executive Branch had been that health, safety, and environmental regulation was a nuisance to business, cutting into industry...

Momentum for Chesapeake Bay restoration has advanced significantly in the past two years, shaped by the combination of President Obama’s Chesapeake Bay Protection and Restoration Executive Order and the EPA’s Bay-wide Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) process. These federal initiatives, taken...

The scope of climate change impacts is expected to be extraordinary, touching every ecosystem on the planet and affecting human interactions with the natural and built environment. From increased surface and water temperatures to sea level rise and more frequent extreme weather events, climate...

Although the Clean Air Act is an imperfect tool for addressing the nation’s greenhouse gas emissions, it is the only available federal mechanism for directly addressing power plant carbon emissions. The Obama Administration’s Clean Power Plan, published in final form in August 2015, tackles...

In the decades since Congress and state legislatures passed most of the nation's most significant environmental laws, our knowledge about ecosystems has increased dramatically. As ecologists learn more about the complex and dynamic interactions that produce valuable ecosystem services,...

We set out to compile a list of rules and policies that could be implemented by state and local governments to provide better protections for U.S. workers. This manual includes more than two dozen such ideas, organized into thematic chapters: Chapter 1: Empowering Workers, with proposals...

In April of 2011, the Center for Progressive Reform issued a white paper that identified 12 key health, safety, and environmental regulatory actions slowly working their way through the Obama Administration's regulatory pipeline. In the white paper, the authors warned that the Administration's...