Posted on 03/28/2012 8:58:20 AM PDT by Mikey_1962
Congress isn’t planning to tackle climate change anytime soon, which means the Environmental Protection Agency is now the last line of defense. But could the EPA’s new rules on carbon pollution get tossed out by the courts? We’re about to find out. On Tuesday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit will hear two days of oral arguments from industry groups that are challenging the EPA’s authority to regulate carbon dioxide. -snip- A 2010 report from the World Resources Institute found that the EPA’s climate rules, when fully deployed, could cover about three-quarters of the country’s greenhouse-gas sources and reduce U.S. carbon emissions anywhere from 5 percent below 2005 levels by 2020 to 12 percent. So could the agency’s forthcoming rules on power plants, which analysts say would make it impossible to build new coal plants in the United States for the foreseeable future. snip The plaintiffs challenging the EPA are pursuing a variety of different arguments to get the rules struck down. Here’s an overview of their strategy: 1) Disputing the science on climate change. 2) Challenging individual regulations. Second, the plaintiffs will try to challenge the EPA’s mobile-source rule, which has already been put into effect. Over the past few years, the EPA has come to an agreement with the Department of Transportation to regulate tailpipe emissions from cars and light trucks by setting stricter fuel-economy standards, raising the corporate average to 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025.
3) Creating total chaos by killing the “tailoring rule.” The plantiffs’ final tactic is to try to force a political crisis. Here’s how this would work. The EPA has proposed a “tailoring rule” to make sure that the permitting program applies only to the very largest polluters State regulators would be overwhelmed. It’d be chaos, in other words.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
“Since its in the DC court EPA will get a pass but SCOTUS will strike it down.”
Wasn’t it SCOTUS that ruled that CO2 is a pollutant in the first place that gave the power to the EPA to run amok?
The only way to reign in the EPA is at the Ballot Box.
We need a President and Congress willing and able to gut the EPA, in terms of current staff and management, budget, and charter. This would include overturning everything the EPA has implemented in the last 10 years.
That should be amended to "Congress isn't planning to tackle Anything anytime soon, except fundraising".
I grew up on the Lower East Side of Detroit one block from the Detroit River. It smelled like dead fish because there were lots of dead fish presumably from pollution. Three members of my family had chronic asthma from the bad air.
That was 40 years ago.
Now the water is clean(er) and the air is clean.
Do I want to go back? No way. Status quo is just fine.
No new regulations.
Any and all regulations on CO2 must be thrown out.
CO2 is NOT a pollutant, and no court can change that.
Attempts to regulate CO2 are pure population control propaganda.
Based on the EPA's "endangerment findings", yes. Those same "endangerment findings" are part of what is being challenged in this case. It has been grinding through the system since Feb, 2010.
We can either elect politicians who will rid us of of the EPA, climate change demagoguery and policies, or suffer the consequences until we can’t take it any longer. Then we can spend more time wishing we could have done something. The courts aren’t going to help us. Judges are inundated with the same lies, propaganda, and bad science that poisons the rest of Washington.
Incorrect, the second paragraph points out the determination that CO2 endangered was made in 2009. EPA did not have authority to determine endangerment until after the SCOTUS decision.
Also, it should be pointed out that the 2007 SCOTUS decision was re-enforced by a second SCOTUS decision in 2011.
In that second case, 7 states and the City of New York had sued a group of power companies saying that the power companies CO2 emmissions were a "nuisance" which gave these states and NYC authority to regulate those CO2 emissions.
SCOTUS ruled against those 7 state and NYC saying only the feds via EPA had the authority to regulate CO2, thus enforcing the 2007 decision.
As has been pointed out numerous times since 2009, the best chance to defeat this is in #3 killing the tailoring rule. The premise is that EPA doesn't have the authority to "tailor the regulation'. Only Congress has that authority.
If they can kill the tailoring rule that would force EPA to regulate not only large emitters but many, many small emitters like churches and office buildings with a gas fired central heating units, farmers with diesel powered equipment, body shops, commercial laundrys, bakeries, and uncountable other small business.
Its one thing to go after the large emmitters but it is not politically and economically feasibe to go after small business.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.