EPA and environmental lawyers winning

December 29, 2010 08:45


The real story is the decades-long campaign by environmentalists to weave a legal web all but compelling the government to enact strict new climate change rules.

TheDC analysis: EPA global warming regulations no ‘end run’ around Congress

By Jonathan Strong – The Daily Caller

EXCERPTS:

In 1970, before global warming was even on the radar map, Congress in the Clean Air Act gave the EPA the power to regulate air pollutants that damage “weather” and “climate” from automobiles and other moving pollution sources.

But in the last few years of the Clinton administration, the Carol Browner-led EPA issued a legal memo laying the groundwork for regulating global warming under the Clean Air Act’s existing language.

Years later, completely stymied by the Bush administration and Republicans in Congress, environmentalists took the memo and ran with it – in court.

In 2007, the Supreme Court sided with them, 5-4, in Massachusetts v. EPA. “Because greenhouse gases fit well within the Clean Air Act’s capacious definition of ‘air pollutant,’ we hold that EPA has the statutory authority to regulate the emission of such gases,” the court ruled.

That court battle was the real fight, and environmentalists already won, three years ago.

FULL ARTICLE



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