A group of lawmakers in Cheyenne is meeting today to discuss a bill that would block implementation of the federal Clean Power Plan in Wyoming unless it is approved by the state Legislature – which is considered unlikely – or the plan’s legality is upheld in the courts.
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Nationwide, by 2030 the rule would cut power sector carbon emissions 32 percent from 2005 levels.
“The plan is fully consistent with the Clean Air Act, and relies on the same time-tested state-federal partnership that, since 1970, has reduced harmful air pollution by 70 percent, while the US economy has tripled”, she wrote.
Fifteen other states, including Washington, DC, say they plan to intervene on behalf of the EPA, arguing that the rules are not only legal, they are necessary.
“West Virginia is proud to be leading the charge against this Administration’s blatant and unprecedented attack on coal”, that state’s attorney general, Patrick Morrisey, said in a news release. The new rules require each state to create an effective plan to meet the cuts at power plants.
Gina McCarthy, the EPA administrator, said the agency was on solid legal ground.
The attorneys general said they are hopeful that more states will join the coalition.
They complain that the administration has “bypassed” Congress, though Mr. Obama has repeatedly urged congressional leaders to pass climate legislation that would take the place of the EPA rules.
The Natural Resources Defense Council has a good explainer on the plan’s strengths, not least of which is that most states are already well on their way to coming up with a plan for compliance. Poorer nations are demanding more than $100-billion (U.S.) a year in financing from taxpayers and companies in the industrialized world, which they hold responsible for the growing climate-change threat. “Endless and expensive legal fights against clean air are not what we should get from our Attorney General, but it’s sadly what we’ve come to expect”.
They are likely to ask the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, where legal challenges will be litigated, for an immediate stay of the plan.
“Here’s what is lost in this administration’s crusade for ideological purity: the livelihoods of our coal miners and their families”, he said in a statement.
Next week on Capitol Hill, U.S. Senator Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) plans to join U.S. Senator Heidi Heitkamp (D-N.D.) in introducing a resolution of disapproval, what will be an attempt to stop the EPA from moving forward with the new regulations for existing power plants.
Barrett, who co-authored a letter in support of the Clean Power Plan with 33 other legislators, said the federal overreach argument by the state attorneys general suing the EPA doesn’t ring true to him.
Walker had been promising that Wisconsin would be part of the multi-state lawsuit, and while in Milwaukee on Tuesday, he didn’t hesitate to repeat himself.
The series of regulations, proposed in June 2014 and finalized this August, are the first federal rules limiting carbon dioxide emissions from existing power plants.
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“So if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can; it’s just that it will bankrupt them, because they’re going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that’s being emitted”, Obama said during a 2008 interview with the San Francisco Chronicle’s editorial board.
