Challenges to EPA’s GHG Tailoring Rule Pile Up
Opposition to EPA’s Tailoring Rule may be reaching a critical density. As reported by Biomass Intel yesterday:
Cap-and-trade has become the lame duck on Capital Hill and now it goes the way of a dead horse. Aggressive opposition to GHG regulation has grown steadily in recent weeks, despite being jettisoned early into the jet wash of health care reform.
With Senate cap-and-trade on the back-burner, several states have joined mounting Congressional opposition to the EPA’s authority to regulate GHG emissions under its tailoring rule announced in December 2009.
Most recently, Virginia’s Attorney General, Kenneth T. Cuccinelli II, has asked the EPA for more time to challenge climate findings. Virginia now joins Texas and Alabama in fighting the EPA in its efforts to regulate CO2.
According to the Associated Press, Cuccinelli asked for more time to review “newly available information” that might directly affect the EPA’s decision and contradict the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) AR report of 2007. The EPA relied heavily on the report to draft its tailoring rule, which authorizes the agency to regulate GHG gases from vehicles, but the precedent will likely result in substantial regulation for other source categories as well.
EPA in an Awkward Position
For many, the EPA’s announcement was seen as a watershed moment giving teeth to the Supreme Court’s 2007 Massachusetts v. EPA ruling, which held that the EPA must regulate emissions under the Clean Air Act. But now that the EPA has set the stage for federal regulation of GHGs, it finds itself in an awkward position if it can survive recent legal challenges. The issue facing the agency is whether to preempt a legislative cap-and-trade debate, which is currently stalled out in the Senate, and begin regulating GHG emissions this year. The Obama administration and many lawmakers have indicated their preference that regulations be developed through enabling legislation.
Lawsuits Piling Up at the Door of the DC’s Circuit Court of Appeals
Lawsuits challenging the EPA’s ruling piled up in recent weeks in advance of yesterday’s deadline for critics to file petitions in the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. Among them, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce on Friday petitioned a federal appeals court to reconsider EPA’s determination that greenhouse gases threaten public health and welfare, a finding that paves the way for broad regulations of the heat-trapping emissions.
Many question the efficacy of an economy-wide regulatory regime given current economic conditions. Meanwhile, the whole carbon regulation debate is stalled out at the peril of meaningful action on the international stage.
Image: Flickr/papadont
