You’ve Never Heard of Him, but He’s Remaking the Pollution Fight

This spring the Biden administration proposed or implemented eight major environmental regulations, including the nation’s toughest climate rule, rolling out what experts say are the most ambitious limits on polluting industries by the government in a single season.

Piloting all of that is a man most Americans have never heard of, running an agency that is even less well known.

But Richard Revesz has begun to change the fundamental math that underpins federal regulations designed to protect human health and the environment. And those calculations could affect American life and the economy for years to come.

Mr. Revesz, 65, heads the obscure but powerful White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, which is effectively the gatekeeper and final word on all new federal regulations. It has been known as the place where new rules proposed by government agencies, particularly environmental standards, go to die — or at least to be weakened or delayed.

But Mr. Revesz, a climate law expert and former dean of the New York University School of Law, joined the Biden…