David Doniger, Policy Director, Climate and Clean Air Program, Washington, D.C.
As we sweat through this roaring-hot, extreme-weather summer, nearly 3 million Americans have raised their voices in public comments supporting EPA’s proposed standards to curb carbon pollution from new power plants and calling for action on the nation’s dirty existing power plants too.
Meanwhile, a handful of power companies and red states stagger on with zombie lawsuits to block EPA from doing its job, and with zombie plans for coal-fired projects with little prospect of getting financed or built. Here’s an update on some of their shenanigans.
Zombie Litigation: In June, a coalition of coal and oil industry groups, climate science-deniers, and conservative politicians lost “the big one,” their combined challenge to EPA’s initial carbon pollution curbs – the endangerment finding, clean car standards, and permit requirements for big industrial sources. In Coalition for Responsible Regulation v. EPA, the Court of Appeals in Washington unanimously rejected every attack. EPA’s reading of the Clean Air Act was “unambiguously correct” and EPA had ample support for its scientific assessment that carbon pollution is causing dangerous warming. The unanimous ruling, by judges spanning the court’s ideological spectrum, is widely regarded ...
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