The policy implications of changing climatic conditions in the Arctic region, and specifically the record loss of ice cover, are explored in a newly updated report from the Congressional Research Service. See Changes in the Arctic, March 17, 2015.
“There are only eight nations in the world whose territory above the Arctic Circle gives them the right to claim being an Arctic nation,” said Adm. Robert Papp, Jr., the U.S. Special Representative for the Arctic, at a congressional hearing last December. “The United States is one, although it has been my experience that Americans do not embrace or fully understand the concept of being an Arctic nation.”
Other new and updated CRS products that Congress has withheld from online public distribution include the following.
Energy Tax Incentives: Measuring Value Across Different Types of Energy Resources, March 19, 2015
Recipients of the Congressional Medal of Honor, CRS Fact Sheet, March 19, 2015
“Holds” in the Senate, March 19, 2015
Increased Campaign Contribution Limits in the FY2015 Omnibus Appropriations Law: Frequently Asked Questions, March 17, 2015
U.S. Manufacturing in International Perspective, March 17, 2015
African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA): Background and Reauthorization, March 13, 2015
International Drug Control Policy: Background and U.S. Responses, March 16, 2015
This rule gives agencies significantly more authority over certain career policy roles. Whether that authority improves accountability or creates new risks depends almost entirely on how agencies interrupt and apply it.
Our environmental system was built for 1970s-era pollution control, but today it needs stable, integrated, multi-level governance that can make tradeoffs, share and use evidence, and deliver infrastructure while demonstrating that improved trust and participation are essential to future progress.
Durable and legitimate climate action requires a government capable of clearly weighting, explaining, and managing cost tradeoffs to the widest away of audiences, which in turn requires strong technocratic competency.
FAS is launching the Center for Regulatory Ingenuity (CRI) to build a new, transpartisan vision of government that works – that has the capacity to achieve ambitious goals while adeptly responding to people’s basic needs.