The battle surrounding the Obama administration’s efforts to curb greenhouse gas emissions opened a new front late last week when the US Chamber of Commerce made good on its threat to launch a legal challenge to the Environmental Protection Agency’s right to impose rules that limit carbon emissions.
The group said on Friday that is has filed a petition to challenge the EPA’s decision that it is allowed to regulate carbon emissions under the existing Clean Air Act. The legal challenge will allege the EPA lapsed from the correct processes when reaching the “endangerment finding” that ruled greenhouse gases pose a threat to human health, and as a result can be legislated under the Clean Air Act.
The EPA’s ruling prompted fierce criticism from Republicans and a number of business groups, including the US Chamber of Commerce, which controversially vowed to fight the ruling, prompting a number of pro-regulation firms such as Apple and Pacific Gas and Electric to quit the trade association.
The Chamber has subsequently ditched its earlier calls for a series of public hearings on climate science similar to the Scopes Trial that examined the theory of evolution in the 1920s, but maintains the EPA should not be able to impose rules to cut emissions from vehicles and power plants.
Steven J. Law, chief legal officer and general counsel of the US Chamber of Commerce, said in a statement that the legal challenge “will focus specifically on the inadequacies of the process that EPA followed in triggering Clean Air Act regulation, and not on scientific issues related to climate change or endangerment”.
The EPA has long maintained that it carried out a lengthy and comprehensive review before ruling that the impacts from climate change would pose a threat to human health, and is expected to fight the suit.
Environmental groups have also accused the Chamber of Commerce of acting on behalf of carbon intensive industries to delay efforts to tackle climate change that could impose new costs on their businesses.
However, Law said the Chamber “strongly supports efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere”, but maintains that the Clean Air Act is an ineffective means of doing so.
“The wrong way [to curb emissions] is through the EPA’s endangerment finding, which triggers Clean Air Act regulation,” he said. “Because of the huge potential impact on jobs and local economies, this is an issue that requires careful analysis of all available data and options. Unfortunately, the agency failed to do that and instead overreached. The result is a flawed administrative finding that will lead to other poorly conceived regulations further downstream. “
He added that the “right way” to reduce emissions is through bipartisan legislation that “promotes new technologies, emphasises efficiency, ensures affordable energy for families and businesses, and defends American jobs while returning our economy to prosperity”, as well as a comprehensive international agreement that includes all CO2 emitting economies.
In theory, the Chamber’s assertion that it would support bi-partisan efforts to pass climate change legislation will be welcomed by the Obama Administration, which has long maintained that regulating emissions through the Clean Air Act is a fall back option and that it would prefer to pass specific climate change legislation.
However, the draft climate change bill currently before the Senate has stalled in the face of fierce Republican opposition and while a small bi-partisan group of Senators are working on a compromise version of the legislation, fears are mounting that the bill will have to be hugely watered down if it is to gain any form of cross party support.
Meanwhile, the Chamber of Commerce’s legal challenge to the EPA is just the latest in a series of legal maneuvers designed to neuter the agency’s power to address climate change.
The Utah House of Representatives last week passed a controversial resolution calling on the EPA to reverse its decision on the grounds that climate change constitutes a scientific conspiracy, while Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski recently attempted to employ little used powers available under the Congressional Review Act to challenge the EPA ruling in the Senate.
