The Center for Progressive Reform, a nonprofit research and educational organization, today delivered to the Obama transition team seven proposed Executive Orders designed to achieve innovative and meaningful federal action on health, safety and the environment. The seven proposals are outlined in the report - Protecting Public Health and the Environment by the Stroke of a Presidential Pen: Seven Executive Orders for the President ’s First 100 Days.
These proposals could, if adopted, launch federal action by the new Obama-Biden administration in several key areas, including climate change, reinvigorating safeguards against toxics in the environment that are harmful to children, allowing citizens the right to sue for damages due to faulty drugs and products, increasing protection for public lands, making environmental justice a key factor in federal decision-making; and reinstituting policies of transparency in government.
“President Obama and the new Congress have much work ahead of them,” said CPR President Rena Steinzor, one of 13 CPR Member Scholars who collaborated on Protecting Public Health and the Environment by the Stroke of a Presidential Pen. “We propose seven orders. Some undo harmful policies of the Bush Administration on health, safety and environmental matters; others launch new initiatives in those areas. These orders would have a very real impact on the issues at stake, and they’d send a clear message that a new sheriff is in town.”
The seven items on their wish list are:
1. Climate Change. Require all federal agencies to measure, report, and reduce their carbon footprints.
2. Climate Change. Direct all federal agencies to consider the climate change-related implications of their actions as part of their obligations under the National Environmental Protection Act.
3. Protecting Children from Toxics. Require all federal agencies to develop plans implementing an affirmative agenda to protect children from toxics, to account for the unique attributes of children when conducting risk assessments, and to stop discounting prospective benefits for children and future generations when conducting cost-benefit analyses.
4. Environmental Justice. Clarify key terminology for understanding environmental justice issues and require all federal agencies to conduct meaningful analyses of the environmental justice impacts of their actions, undertake steps to ameliorate environmental injustices, and commit to carrying out an affirmative environmental agenda.
5. Transparency in Government. Restore the presumption of disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act, limit the ability of agencies to avoid the transparency provisions of the Federal Advisory Committee Act, and introduce greater transparency into the regulatory review process conducted by the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs.
6. Victims’ Right to Sue. Establish a strong presumption against federal agency preemption of more protective state health and environmental laws and institute a rigorous procedure for agencies to follow in order to overcome that presumption.
7. Public Lands. Establish the goal of ecological integrity as the baseline for making public land management decisions, revoke two Bush-era Executive Orders that improperly prioritized the goals of energy development over the statutory goals of sustainable land use, and broaden opportunities for public participation in land management decisions.
View the full Protecting Public Health and the Environment by the Stroke of a Presidential Pen report.
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