Abby Rabinowitz at the New Republic writes—Undoing the Clean Power Plan Will Be a Legal Nightmare:
The Supreme Court has ruled that greenhouse gases are a pollutant under the Clean Air Act, a decision it has stood by three times, starting with the landmark 2007 case Massachusetts v. EPA. In that case, spearheaded by a dozen states, the court rejected the Bush-era EPA’s reasoning for why it could not regulate greenhouse gas emissions for motor vehicles, and ordered it to determine whether carbon dioxide endangered public health and welfare. In 2009, the EPA made an endangerment finding that was upheld by the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals.
“So long as the endangerment finding stands, then the EPA is required to regulate greenhouse gases from any number of sources, including existing power plants,” said Michael Burger, executive director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia Law School.
[EPA chief Scott] Pruitt thus has a menu of legally imperfect options. Most end with him being sued by the same coalition of states and environmental groups now supporting the plan—which will make for a piquant reversal given that, in his last job as attorney general of Oklahoma, Pruitt sued the EPA fourteen times, with four challenges to the Clean Power Plan alone.
Legally, Pruitt’s safest bet is to write a new rule that is less effective and less expensive for the industry, said Burger—“like the Clean Power Plan repeal and replace.” But to make a rule that holds up in court, Pruitt will have to do something he currently seems loath to do: Admit that carbon dioxide contributes to global warming and that the EPA has the right to regulate it. Given his climate-denying ideology, he may try to repeal the endangerment finding itself.
During his Senate confirmation hearing, Democrats troubled by Pruitt’s deep ties to fossil fuel industries pressed him on this precise point. Pruitt told Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, “I believe that the EPA...has obligations to address the CO2 issue.” But then, in a headline-grabbing interview on CNBC March 9, Pruitt said he did not believe that carbon dioxide is a primary contributor to climate change.
“He’s choosing what may be characterized as alternative climate facts,” Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon told the New Republic. “That’s certainly contrary to his pledge to base his actions on objective scientific data.”
QUOTATION OF THE DAY
“Strong, responsible unions are essential to industrial fair play. Without them the labor bargain is wholly one-sided. The parties to the labor contract must be nearly equal in strength if justice is to be worked out, and this means that the workers must be organized and that their organizations must be recognized by employers as a condition precedent to industrial peace.”
~Louis Brandeis, The Curse of Bigness: Miscellaneous Papers of Louis D. Brandeis (1965)
TWEET OF THE DAY
BLAST FROM THE PAST
At Daily Kos on this date in 2010—Insurers Say They Don't Have to Cover Sick Kids Yet:
The NYT's Robert Pear continues coverage of the key story coming out of last week's passage and signing of health insurance reform: the contention by insurers that a key part of the law that is supposed to take effect immediately will not. That is, they are asserting that the provision that prevents them from denying coverage to children with pre-existing conditions--intended to begin with policies that begin on or after Sept. 23, 2010--doesn't do that at all.
HIGH IMPACT STORIES • TOP COMMENTS
On today’s Kagro in the Morning show, Greg Dworkin catches us up on the Gop health care bomb & the latest polls. Joan McCarter collects plaudits for her early warning on a gov’t shutdown, and updates the Gorsuch fight and the Gop’s big privacy sellout. Manafort & Cyprus are back in the news.
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