A recent appeals court decision that resoundingly upholds the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions should send a strong signal to those who take issue with such regulations.
The only way they’re going to have a say in how such rules are formulated is to go back to Congress and negotiate climate change legislation in good faith.
We understand their concerns with the 2009 Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade legislation. We weren’t crazy about it, either, but acknowledged the need for greenhouse reductions, which is a place some critics won’t go.
Sponsored by Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., and Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass., the legislation leaned too heavily on the yet-to-be-realized potential of clean energy technology.
Furthermore, the 1,200-page legislation, which failed to pass, created an elaborate market in which carbon shares could be bought and sold. A straight-up carbon tax would be a more honest approach, but far more difficult to sell politically. Some environmentalists favor that approach as well.
In any case, the point is that the ruling on June 26 by a three-judge appeals panel based in Washington, D.C., leaves opponents little hope of shooting down greenhouse gas regulations via the court system.
The appeals court said the EPA was “unambigiously correct” in its efforts to use existing authority to regulate the emissions of six heat-trapping gases. The EPA rules at issue would apply to large industrial facilities, such as coal-burning power plants.
The authority stems from a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in 2007 that stated the Clean Air Act required the EPA to determine whether greenhouse gases were a pollutant and take steps to regulate them if they were.
This most recent legal action challenged the EPA’s determination in concluding greenhouse gases were harmful to people. Those suing claimed that in coming to its conclusion, the EPA relied on faulty science from groups such as the National Academies of Science and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The court disagreed.
There very well may be continued legal challenges by entities affected by the rules, and that could drag out the regulatory process for years. Perhaps that’s the point. It would be a wiser approach, we think, for interested parties to acknowledge the legal foundation for regulating greenhouse gas emissions and collaboratively come to agreement on how to do it in a way that protects the environment yet is least disruptive to the economy.
