CleanLaw

In this episode, our executive director Joe Goffman speaks again with Cynthia Giles, our guest fellow and former Assistant Administrator for EPA’s Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance. They discuss her ongoing work examining how well environmental rules do in ensuring compliance with pollution and waste reduction requirements, where they fail, and how to make sure they succeed.

You can find a transcript of this episode here https://eelp.law.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/CleanLaw-51-Joe-and-Cynthia-Next-Gen-Compliance-3.pdf

In our 50th episode of CleanLaw, Erin Brockovich speaks with Caitlin McCoy about some of the major water issues in the U.S. today and what people can do to work toward better water quality in their communities and beyond. Their conversation covers community science, tips for effective advocacy, legacy water pollution issues, and the problems with current laws and regulations. Erin shares an inspiring message that we all have the power to demand better drinking water and smarter approaches to regulation. You can read more in Erin's new book, Superman's Not Coming.

Transcript of this episode https://eelp.law.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/CleanLaw-50-Caitlin-and-Erin-Brockovich-Supermans-Not-Coming.pdf

Robin Just interviews our former EELP Fellow Laura Bloomer about changes in the Department of the Interior under the Trump administration. Laura interviewed dozens of former DOI career staff, former political appointees, and natural resources and American Indian law experts and distills their insights in our newest white paper - link below. She breaks down how these changes have been implemented, and makes recommendations for a new administration to repair the damage.

Transcript https://eelp.law.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/CleanLaw-49-Robin-Laura-DOI-Report.pdf

Laura's paper https://eelp.law.harvard.edu/managing-public-lands-under-the-trump-administration-and-beyond/

In this episode Caitlin McCoy talks with Aladdine Joroff, clinical instructor and staff attorney at our Emmett Environmental Law and Policy Clinic, about the recent decision by the Massachusetts Attorney General disapproving Brookline, MA’s law seeking to limit the use of natural gas in buildings, and comments the Clinic submitted on behalf of Mothers Out Front Massachusetts, arguing that Brookline’s law is a traditional exercise of municipal authority and could co-exist with state law.

Transcript of this episode https://eelp.law.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/CleanLaw-48-Caitlin-Aladdine-Brookline-Gas-AD-Decision.pdf

You can find the links to the AG's decision and the Clinics comments, as well as a link to Caitlin’s recent white paper, The Legal Dynamics of Local Limits on Natural Gas Use in Buildings, here https://eelp.law.harvard.edu/cleanlaw-caitlin-mccoy-and-aladdine-joroff-on-recent-mass-ag-decision-on-local-natural-gas-usage-laws/

"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