VA joins TX in challenging EPA on bogus CO2 regulation

February 18, 2010 05:58


By: Barbara Hollingsworth
Local Opinion Editor  Washington Examiner
02/17/10

Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli has officially petitioned the Environmental Protection Agency to reconsider its December 15 endangerment finding that links carbon dioxide emissions with man-made global warming. The regulatory finding is widely seen as an end-run around stalled cap-and-trade legislation in the U.S. Senate.

Cuccinelli based his request on the fact that internal emails and documents that raise questions about the reliability of climate data from the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit were released after the close of the EPA’s public comment period.

You can read the full petition at http://www.oag.state.va.us/LEGAL_LEGIS/CourtFilings/index.html

“The new information raises questions with respect to the validity and integrity of a substantial segment of the data upon which the Endangerment Finding rests,” the petition says. It also requests that EPA reconvene its regulatory proceeding to allow public comment on the newly released information.

This would open a whole new can of worms, given even more recent reports that the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s own 2007 report was also riddled with errors.

By relying almost exclusively on the now discredited IPCC, the Virginia attorney general accused EPA of ceding its responsibility as a federal agency to make an informed decision about the dangers of carbon dioxide using scientific data that is “subject to U.S. data quality and transparency standards.” EPA also failed to properly consider the economic consequences, he added.

Cuccinelli is not alone. The Utah House also approved a resolution asking the federal government not to proceed with its plans to regulate CO2, and the State of Texas is taking the federal agency to court in an effort to halt enforcement of what amounts to an enormous energy tax imposed without a vote in Congress.

Environmentalists have long used the regulatory powers of the federal government to advance their radical agenda with little or no pushback from elected public officials, who were reluctant to be characterized as soft on polluters even as too-stringent clean air and water requirements killed industries in their jurisdictions. That era may well be over.



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