Synopsis: The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, by pulling its punches in the Massachusetts v. EPA Supreme Court case, granting California a waiver to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from motor vehicles, and declaring greenhouse gas emissions a danger to public health and welfare, has positioned itself to regulate fuel economy, set climate and energy policy for the nation, and amend the Clean Air Act – powers never delegated to EPA by Congress. It is time to rein in this rogue agency. The Congressional Review Act Resolution of Disapproval introduced by Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) is the way to do it.
When did Congress tell the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to license California and other states to adopt non-federal fuel economy standards within their borders? When did Congress tell EPA to act as co-equal or even senior partner with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) in setting fuel-economy standards for the auto industry?…
(Note: This column is adapted from a forthcoming article, co-authored with former Virgiania Governor George F. Allen, in the University of Richmond Law Review.)
December 28, 2009 was the final day to submit comments on the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) proposed Prevention of Significant Deterioration and Title V Greenhouse Gas Tailoring Rule. This is the rulemaking in which EPA proposes to “tailor” the Clean Air Act’s (CAA or Act’s) Prevention of Significant Deterioration (PSD) pre-construction permitting program and Title V operating permits program so that they can be applied to carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gases (GHGs) without spawning an economically-chilling administrative morass.
The Tailoring Rule is an eye opener, because it reveals, or rather confirms in spades, that the Supreme Court’s decision in Massachusetts v. EPA has created an almost bottomless well of “absurd results” — disastrous consequences that EPA can avoid only by poaching legislative power and amending the Act.…
Even if energy realists and their allies fend off Waxman-Markey, wave after wave of global warming regulation could still sweep across the U.S. economy under the aegis of EPA and the Clean Air Act.
As explained in a previous post, the carbon dioxide (CO2) litigation campaign that begat the Supreme Court’s Massachusetts v. EPA decision (April 2007) could shut down much of our economy and replace self-government via the people’s elected representatives with the rule of bureaucrats and courts.
Energy realists need to school themselves in this constellation of issues, because the clock is ticking. On April 17, the Environmental Protection Agency, responding to Mass. v. EPA, published a proposed rule concluding that greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from new motor vehicles cause or contribute to health- and welfare-endangering “air pollution.” …