Posted on 11/30/2014 3:10:00 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
Supporters and opponents of the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) proposed carbon regulations for power plants talk about the benefits and costs as if enactment of the new standards is inevitable.
But there are still many steps that have to be taken at the federal and state level to meet the Obama administration’s goal of slashing power plants’ carbon emissions by 30 percent by 2030.
And the path ahead is fraught with potential obstacles, as critics strive to weaken the regulations or scrap them entirely.
Here is a closer look at five of the greatest threats to President Obama’s landmark rule to fight climate change.
The next president
If the EPA does not finalize the regulation and start certifying states’ implementation plans by the beginning of 2017, the next president could stop it from moving forward.
To Michael Greenstone, director of the University of Chicago’s Energy Policy Institute, that is the greatest threat to the climate rule.
“If that has not happened, if there are not finalized state implementation plans, then there is a risk the new president may feel differently,” Greenstone said.
The new president would have the same regulatory power as Obama, including repealing regulations. It’s too early to make educated predictions for the 2016 election, but it’s safe to expect that any Republican nominee would seek to dismantle it.
To avoid that, Greenstone recommended that Obama and the EPA work diligently to make the rule final, and work with states to implement it as quickly as possible.
“Someone’s got to march this across the finish line before the Obama administration leaves town,” he said.
The EPA plans to finalize the rule next June and start working on guidance for state plans soon thereafter.
The courts
The Obama administration and supporters and opponents of the climate rule expect someone to challenge it in court after it is made final. Observers believe such a case would likely wind up the Supreme Court, like many of Obama’s main environmental rules have.
That would represent would be the ultimate legal test for the contentious rules, whose critics have said the Clean Air Act does not give the federal government the power to regulate carbon in the way it has proposed.
The administration is confident that it is on safe legal ground. Lawyers went out of their way to predict how legal challenges would play out write the rule to withstand them, officials say.
Nonetheless, the courts could present a real threat to the rule, and legal experts aren’t sure how justices would decide.
Spending bills
Incoming Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) recently identified spending bills as one of the best tools to “get the EPA reined in” and fight rules like the carbon limits for power plants.
McConnell’s motivation — beyond general his opposition to the president and his environmental agenda — is to protect the coal industry that is integral to Kentucky’s economy and that Republicans believe would be hit hard by the rules.
Appropriations bills provide a special avenue for attaching provisions to steer regulatory action. They must be passed by Congress and signed by Obama every year, or the government shuts down.
But that represents a major political risk for Republicans. If Obama disagrees with the measures, would Republicans allow the government to shut down in the name of stopping the EPA?
Congressional Review Act
The Congressional Review Act, passed in the 1990s amid Republican furor over the size and scope of the federal government, provides a unique opportunity to attack rules.
Shortly after a rule is made final, lawmakers can quickly stop its implementation. But the bill would still have to be signed by the president or passed by a veto-proof majority.
McConnell has also shown an affinity for the Congressional Review Act. He has promised to propose a measure to block the power plant rule as soon as its finalized, and asked the Congressional Research Service this year to study whether the review could happen before a rule is finalized. The CRS said no.
Spending bills, the Congressional Review Act and any other congressional action to rebuff the president’s plan face sizable hurdles, in that Obama unlikely to sign any bill to weaken the climate rule — and it would be difficult for opponents to muster a veto-proof majority.
States
Like many rules under the Clean Air Act, the climate rule relies on states to write implementation plans and enforce them on the power sector.
But some states, like Texas and North Dakota, have discussed whether to simply ignore the regulations and not write plans.
The strategy got some recent attention when the conservative Federalist Society released a white paper in November arguing that states should try the tactic.
The Clean Air Act gives the EPA the power to write its own “federal implementation plans” for the states, though Greenstone, of the University of Chicago, believes that federal officials would not use that power lightly.
“I have the sense that in the current environment, where there’s not a lot of congressional support for regulating carbon, that may well be a fight that EPA chooses not to have,” Greenstone said.
The EPA has occasionally forced implementation plans upon states, but it does so reluctantly.
Sierra Rayne, American Thinker - Nov 30, 2014: 'No one's safe': Climate hysteria in Flagstaff "Back in October 2012, Grist published an article entitled “Flagstaff sustainability chief Nicole Woodman keeps a cool head as temperatures rise.” Not sure what is meant by the present-tense use of “as temperatures rise” when we talk about Flagstaff, Arizona. The average annual temperature in this area has no significant trend for three decades and counting.
But this is the claim that caught my attention in Grist's question-and-answer format with the sustainability chief:....."
How pathetic. A law to stop a law we didn't consent to.
For Article V opponents, name the amendment that repealed Article I Section 1.
The next president needs to remove all left overs and sympathizers in all agencies from this a##hat administration
The problem is that anybody but Congress gets to make law. They may have passed the ball with the courts approval but the Constitution was not amended to allow that. Since this has been SOP for the last 70 years only a real amendment can stop this. Since Congress is quite happy with the status quo only Article V is going to work.
As for the few laws (compared to regs from the exec branch) that congress passes, few are read and understood by members before they vote.
Whatever the creature is, it isn’t republican government.
EPA_____ nuke it from orbit its the only way to be sure. America is so so clean compared to 30-40 years ago when we had a lot more polluting industry here...that’s all in Asia now. The young ones are missing this comparison so believe the Obama/Democrat lies that America is great need of being cleaned up and that our air is polluted.
This ignorance is how the Dems are able to get traction on BS global warming. In an ideal world the EPA would be eliminated. Their mission is done as far as making America a cleaner place.
EPA was started by Nixon. They now employ 15000 trough feeders. I’ll bet the EPA was no more than two hundred employees in its first five years. Today’s EPA is the result of the worst kind of greedy bureaucratic empire building
All this is being done to put the breaks on the U.S. economy, our economic and military superpower status - to level the playing field - inorder to speed up a global economy/identity and governance.
I was just checking out how this hornets nest got created. I remember , from public school, the evil Robber Barons of the Railroads. (At least this is how they were depicted). That was the propaganda load used to pass a "Commerce Act" that first allowed nameless faceless bureaucrats to rule over us.The Supreme court ruled in favor of the railroads 15 out of 16 times.The important thing is that the Statists got the camels nose under the tent. The next phase of the cancer was a way to feed it. That is what the 16th amendment did. The 17th made sure the States would have much less power to stop it.
In an ideal world Congress could NEVER delegate to ANYBODY the power to create law. In our system , the way it was intended, the states take action on the tiny details.
The EPA is a jobs program for eco-fanatics and liberals with a heavy dose of affirmative action. If they don’t come up with ever more draconian regulations then they are out of a job...at least theoretically.
Ir really helps to understand the modern Federal Gov’t as being 60% a jobs program for leftists, so all kinds of Federale trough feeders have to look busy and useful.
EXAMPLE__ The Department of Education employs 600 people in its civil rights division. Thats an amazingly high number. Those jobs go 100% to affirmative action babies and liberals
By and large Congress likes it this way so the Congress critters have more time to meet with their real constituents...the lobbyists. Plus more time for Congress critters and his wife to make the social scene.
IOW Congress has abdicated rules/regulations making power to the Federale bureaucracy.
OK!! Everybody pay attention!
Lesson for today:
1. The sun is 1,300,000 times as big as the earth.
2. The sun is a ball of fire that controls the climates of all its planets.
3. The earth is one of the sun’s planets.
4. The earth is a speck in comparison to the size of the sun.
5. Inhabitants of the earth are less than specks.
Study Question: How do less-than-specks in congress plan to control the sun?
Great minds think alike.....and I’ve long said the biggest “cancer” (yes, the term I used - sometimes I say malignancy) threatening us is the bureau - where the unnamed, unaccountable, unknown cubicle dwellers that we pay for destroy us cut by cut.
In truth, much of the regulating and rule writing is done by EPA contractors as directed
Just think of all the CO2 these Illegals are exhaling
The government has no skin in the energy game, so they should just STFU.
There was supposed to be no more SNOW by now. The climate change “experts” said so! They have been wrong, and lying, all along!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
excellent!
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