Americans are a litigious bunch. Pour hot coffee on yourself? Go ahead and sue the company that sold it to you for not warning you that it was hot. Didn’t make the cheer leading team? Sue the coach for discrimination against blondes! Actually fell for the ads saying that Airborne would keep you from getting a cold? Sue ‘em!
But not all lawsuits are frivolous. In fact, seventeen U.S. states, the District of Columbia, two cities and eleven environmental groups are suing the EPA over the most serious of infractions, its failure to decide whether it will regulate greenhouse gases following the Supreme Court ruling that the EPA, currently lead by Administrator Stephen Johnson, has not just the right to regulate CO2 emissions under the Clean Air Act but must determine what are the public health and welfare risks of emissions and regulate them accordingly. It also determined that states have a right to sue them if they don’t. In fact, the new lawsuit was filed exactly one year after the Supreme Court gave its ruling in Massachusetts vs. EPA, its first ever on climate change.
And so, the EPA… did nothing.
Actually, they notified Congress last week finally that they would be writing some proposed rules on CO2 emission regulations and seeking scientific comment in order to make an endangerment assessment. If you are wondering which scientists those will be (the ones that are actual scientists or the ones that work for the oil companies?), you are not alone.
But the plaintiffs in Wednesday's court filing including Arizona, California, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington and the District of Columbia, the city of New York, the mayor and city council of Baltimore and the Sierra Club are not waiting around to find out. They are demanding action from the EPA within 60 days, with the release of findings in early December that demonstrate the public health risk which would force the EPA into regulatory action. Those findings were abruptly tabled and not released. Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley calls their failure to begin the process of regulation “a shameful dereliction of duty.”
The EPA claims that the Supreme Court ruling did not set any deadlines and that they need time to evaluate how to best regulate emissions -- and beyond just vehicle emissions. The plaintiffs maintain, however, that the EPA had already determined that CO2 posed a public health threat due to climate change, and so is compelled to act according to the first Supreme Court ruling. The House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming unanimously voted this week to issue a subpoena for all EPA documents on the issue, so the proof may be forthcoming sooner rather than later.
The EPA is still trying to delay the regulations, not responding to the House’s request for information and talking about going through the lengthy process of seeking public comment on the implications of regulation, i.e. let the fossil fuel companies weigh in. To make matters worse, Administrator Johnson continues his history of going against the findings of his own senior staff, still putting an “if” before the words emissions and public health, as in if emissions are found to endanger public health. Administrator Johnson is not just being disingenuous, he is willfully disregarding public welfare. If ever there were an immediate danger that we are aware of that required immediate action, it is this one. And if going to the courts is the only way to get the EPA to act, then a big thank you to those states, cities and organizations willing to sue the EPA for its flagrant disregard of its responsibilities.
