States Set to Sue the U.S. Over Greenhouse Gases

dnormant writes to tell us The New York Times is reporting that more than a dozen states are gearing up to sue the Bush administration for holding up efforts to regulate automobile emissions. "The move comes as New York and other Northeastern states are stepping up their push for tougher regulation of greenhouse gases as part of their continuing opposition to President Bush's policies. On Wednesday, Gov. Eliot Spitzer's administration is to issue regulations requiring power plants to pay for their greenhouse gas emissions, part of a broader plan among 10 Northeastern states, known as the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, to move beyond federal regulators in Washington and regulate such emissions on their own."

Comments

Re:One problem with this plan

[alan_dershowitz]

We're being taxed and surcharged into oblivion, and we're passing the savings on to you! You're already being charged for pollution, in fact everyone is, in the costs of having to deal with the problems of pollution. What sucks is that a company can socialize the costs of pollution while privatizing the benefits. Currently I pay less as a polluter by not having to build a new plant, while everyone pays for the pollution cleanup. On the other hand, assessing a penalty according to the amount of pollution coming out of any particular plant has the twin effect of disincentivizing pollution and more fairly distributing the costs of dealing with that pollution (providing the assessed taxes are used for that purpose, which they should be.) This is cheaper and fairer, unless you are looking at it from the perspective of a heavy polluter.

Re:One problem with this plan

[Anonymous Coward]

You'll not be laughin' when Bush claims the lawsuit, if allowed to be open to the general public, would impose a national security risk.

Re:Arrrrgh!

[WillAffleckUW]

Amusing. The party of "State's Rights" arguing against the right of states to make their own tougher regulations.

Ironic.

Re:One problem with this plan

[iluvcapra]

Except suddenly nuclear, wind and solar will have a competitive advantage over coal, oil and gas; there's no luck involved. Energy providers have to compete to provide the lowest cost per kWH, and if carbon costs money, energy producers have incentive to cut it.

Free CO2 in the air is gonna cost somebody a lot of money someday. Collecting a fixed amount for it at the time of origination is a way of containing the risk, since climate change is liable to be more expensive and less predictable.

Re:Six Month Notice

[rrkap]

As for states suing the Feds to force auto manufacturers to decrease emissions, why don't they just do it themselves? California has strict emission control policies. Why can't the rest of these states.

That isn't how air quality regulations work. Under the Clean Air Act, setting auto emissions standards is the exclusive responsibility of the Federal Government. However, because California had stricter emissions standards in place when the Clean Air Act was first passed, California (and only California) was granted a waiver to set its own standards which can be adopted by other states if they choose. This waiver doesn't apply to vehicular CO2 emissions. California (with other states) has already won a suit saying that EPA must grant such a waiver, however EPA has not done so. Thus, they are suing again, this time asking the court to order EPA to do so immediately.

As things currently stand, no state can regulate tailpipe CO2 emissions. When California wins their lawsuit, then states will be able to choose weather to follow CA CO2 regulations or to follow the Federal do-nothing approach.