Posted on 03/29/2015 8:10:39 AM PDT by Kaslin
The Supreme Court heard arguments on Wednesday in Michigan v. EPA, asking whether it was unreasonable for the Environmental Protection Agency to ignore costs in determining the appropriateness of regulating mercury emissions from power plants. The EPA’s proposed regulations are expected to cost the coal industry a whopping $9.6 billion, but only offer a meager $500,000 to $6 million in public health benefits.
Cato filed an amicus brief in the case that focuses on why the EPA chose to ignore costs in developing these regulations. It turns out that EPA could achieve its goal of comprehensively regulating utility emissions only if it ignores the costs. That in turn allowed the EPA to single out power plants – which it couldn’t do under other programs, and to avoid working through the states – as the other programs require. This strategy amounts to little more than a clever trick to circumvent statutory limits on the EPA’s own authority.
In effect, the EPA is exploiting nearly harmless levels of mercury emissions as a Trojan horse – an excuse to regulate all power plant emissions, even ones that are covered by other programs that deny EPA the ability to regulate in this fashion.
Chief Justice Roberts picked up on this point from our brief when he questioned the Solicitor General extensively as to the radical disparity between costs and benefits (see discussion starting p.59 here). He also asked pointed questions regarding the EPA’s attempt at making an “end run” around restrictions on the Clean Air Act.
As Roberts explained, this “end run” works by the EPA first finding a hazardous air pollutant (HAP) that is suitable for regulation—in this case mercury. In the government’s view, this then opens the door for the EPA to “regulate all hazardous pollutants that the source emits,” even if those pollutants – this time particulate matter – are not covered by the applicable sections of the Clean Air Act. The Chief Justice scoffed at the government’s argument, remarking that “I understand how the end run works … I’m just questioning the legitimacy of it.”
The EPA is attempting to offset the admitted disparity between the costs and benefits of regulating mercury emissions by claiming that regulating “co-pollutants” like particulate matter would deliver “$30 to $90 billion” in benefits, far outweighing the $6 million in benefits from mercury regulation and allegedly justifying the tremendous costs to the coal industry.
But what we’re really witnessing here is a heavy-handed power grab. The federal government is grasping at straws to target coal-fired power plants in ways that Congress denied to it. As explained in Cato’s brief, “by refusing to consider costs when deeming it ‘appropriate and necessary’ to regulate power plant’s HAP emissions, the EPA was able to circumvent the Clean Air Act’s statutory bar on regulating criteria pollutants as hazardous air pollutants and aggrandize its authority at the expense of that of the states and their citizens.”
The Economist also recently highlighted many of the concerns we raised. In the end, it seems clear that the EPA’s reading of the law is, as Justice Scalia put it, “silly.” This is just another unacceptable power grab by the executive branch.
Is that.....is that......is that Bill Clinton in drag?
Since the EPA seems to be trying to make our costs of energy ever more unaffordable,maybe we need to figure a way to cut off their energy supply. Who do these people work for.....Iran? They are supposed to be working for the citizens of this country,but it takes a huge stretch of the imagination to see where that’s happening.
Hugging trees ain’t free...
What is most troubling to me is the fact that our own government is in the Supreme Court arguing for and trying to FIND ways to exert more control knowing full well they were denied said powers by laws enacted by elected representatives of the people.
And who is going to stop them? Certainly, not the courts. The courts issue their decrees; the regime ignores them and the descent into lawlessness continues.
Thanks for posting, I have some coal stock that is taking a pounding because of these idiots.
Women that look like her (short gray hair and birkenstocks) are everywhere in the bowels of local, state and fed government making plans and taking names of the "moron" Christian woman, who most have a happy home life, to hurt them someday. They hate happy Christian woman who love their husbands and children.
For four decades, these ugly liberal woman have scoorned and ridiculed me, as I choose to be married and have children, rather then join them burning bras and crying rape!
If the Feds are that concerned about this, why not just give them the 9.6 billion so they can keep operating, continue producing, workers can work and keep the regional economy going?
Ten billion is nothing to the Feds. Heck, they give that much to these nutjob lefty organizations to document how obscure animals scroo.
FReepers, as you read this post, while we need to take care of the environment, please bear in mind that the constitutionally undefined EPA may not exist today if the states hadn’t ratified the 17th Amendment, foolishly giving up the voices of state lawmakers in Congress by doing so.
Next, regarding any federal government action, can anybody please explain why institutionally indoctrinated justices don't first review the Constitution’s Section 8 of Article I to see if the states have delegated to the feds the specific power to do the action in the first place?
In the case of the EPA, not only have the states never delegated to the feds, expressly via the Constitution, the specific power to regulate intrastate environmental issues, but consider this. The Founding States had made the first numbered clauses in the Constitution, Sections 1-3 of Article I, evidently a good place to hide them from activist justices, to clarify that all federal legislative powers are vested in the elected members of Congress, not in the executive or judicial branches, or in non elected bureaucrats like those running the constitutionally undefined EPA.
So Congress has a constitutional monopoly on federal legislative / regulatory powers whether it wants it or not. And by delegating such powers to non-elected bureaucrats, powers that the states have never delegated to Congress in the case of the EPA, Congress and activist justices are wrongly protecting such powers from the wrath of the voters in blatant defiance of Sections 1-3 referenced above imo.
And not only would the EPA possibly not exist if the states hadn’t ratified the 17th Amendment, but there would possibly be all different faces on the Supreme Court pointing out the same constitutional problems with the EPA that I just did.
The 17th Amendment needs to disappear.
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