Late Friday, the National Association of Manufacturers and a number of other parties filed a legal brief challenging the Environmental Protection Agency’s finding that greenhouse gases threaten public health (the so-called endangerment finding).

The NAM’s Vice President for Litigation Quentin Riegel talks about the case below:

The National Association of Manufacturers and 19 other business groups filed a petition in federal appeals court Tuesday challenging the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s latest interpretation of the “Johnson Memo,” in which the agency declared its plans to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from industrial and other stationary sources. The EPA intends to impose its mandates by Jan. 2, 2011.

As NAM President John Engler said in the news release:

Today’s challenge is yet another step we are taking to stop EPA from its overreach in regulating greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act. We believe this issue deserves transparency and debate that should be handled by Congress, not by a bureaucratic agency that has no accountability to the American people.

EPA’s power grab creates uncertainty and adds costly new burdens on manufacturers while further complicating a permitting process the EPA and state environmental enforcement agencies are not equipped to handle. Further, these actions will stifle job creation and harm our competiveness in a global economy by adding compliance, administrative and legal costs.

The trade association petition filed in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit is available here. The NAM’s Manufacturing Law Center has additional background and filings.

Others filing their own litigation include the American Iron and Steel Institute and Gerdau Amersteel Corp., Inc.  From E&E News: (continue reading…)

Jay Timmons, executive vice president of the NAM, returns home to speak to business leaders. From The Chillicothe Gazette, “Chillicothe native: More small town jobs will help restore economy“: “[The] key to create and maintain jobs in the U.S. is to lowering the corporate tax and changing the polices in Washington. ‘One thing I know for sure is that Americans will still stand in line for manufacturing jobs if they are around,’ he said.”

Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, “Manufacturing growing slowly: “At the tail of end last year, there was a spike in orders for durable goods. But that was likely due to an expiring pro-investment tax provision for accelerated depreciation of equipment, according to the National Association of Manufacturers, based in Washington, D.C.”

Detroit News, “Blanchard, Engler agree term limits were bad idea“: “[Engler] did say Granholm’s pursuit of alternative energy manufacturing is taking advantage of an opportunity. ‘We’re in on the bottom, I would say, and have an opportunity,’ he said.”

Birmingham News blog, “Alabama one of three states suing the EPA for its ruling that greenhouse gases are a danger to public health“: “‘If EPA moves forward and begins regulating stationary sources, it will open the door for them to regulate everything from industrial facilities to farms to even American homes,’ John Engler, president of the National Association of Manufacturers, said when his organization filed its challenge last week.”

Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) last week led a group of eight Democratic Senators who, in a letter, challenged the Environmental Protection Agency on plans to regulate carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions. As Sen. Rockefeller said in a release announcing the letter:

At a time when so many people are hurting, we need to put the decisions about our energy future in to the hands of the people and their elected representatives-especially on issues impacting clean coal. EPA actions in this area would have enormous implications and these issues need to be handled carefully and appropriately dealt with by the Congress, not in isolation by a federal environmental agency.

It’s not just in hard times, either. Policy decisions should always be put in the hands of the people and their elected representatives. The executive branch regulates and administrates, but in a representative democracy, it doesn’t arrogate policy decisions to itself.

Joining Rockefeller in the letter were Sens. Mark Begich (AK), Robert Byrd (WV), Sherrod Brown (OH), Robert Casey (PA), Clare McCaskill (MO), Carl Levin (MI), and Max Baucus (MT). The full letter is here.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) this week welcomed the Senators’ letter and noted the bipartisan support for her resolution of disapproval (S.J.Res. 26) that would stop the EPA’s power grab. In a release, she said:

Congress remains the appropriate body to develop climate policy. Having evaluated and pursued other options to respond to EPA’s proposed regulations in the past, I’m convinced that alternatives to the disapproval resolution will face a difficult path forward. Economically damaging regulations will be no more acceptable at some later date.

I commend my colleagues for becoming more engaged in this important issue and hope they will show their commitment by signing on as co-sponsors of the disapproval resolution. It’s time to take the threat of EPA’s command-and-control regulations off the table. 

Left during the day, a message from Biz Markie inviting your blogger to the Repower America rally on Capitol Hill today, featuring EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson and Rev. Lennox Yearwood, Jr., President of the Hip Hop Caucus. Repower America is former Vice President Gore’s organization that supports a radical restructuring of society and the economy to stop global warming.

Here’s the audio, promoting the last stop on the Hip Hop Clean Energy Now! tour. We’ll be interested in how they power the public address system.

Administrator Lisa Jackson was one of the subjects of discussion this morning on the Andy and Grandy local radio show (WMAL) during an interview with Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK), the ranking member of the Senate Environmental and Public Works Committee, which held a budget hearing on the EPA on Tuesday. The Senator was complimentary toward Jackson, suggesting she didn’t really believe that the science on anthropogenic global warming was beyond dispute, and she was just toeing the Administration line.

At the EPW hearing, Inhofe released a new report about the forced consensus community, “‘Consensus’ Exposed: The CRU Controversy,” covering the the controversy surrounding emails and documents released from the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU).

In his committee statement, Inhofe said:

EPA’s endangerment finding rests on bad science. The EPW minority report provides further proof that EPA needs to scrap the endangerment finding and start over again.

But that’s not what EPA is doing. It wants $43.5 million in new funding to regulate greenhouse gases. This is seed money for the most economically destructive regulatory initiative in this nation’s history. The nation is mired in an unemployment crisis; people need jobs. Yet once this effort commences, those fortunate to work will be out of work, and those looking for jobs won’t find them.

And yet the Hip Hop Caucus claims to be rallying for jobs. They should invite Sen. Inhofe to their event.

From Greenwire, via The New York Times, “16 ‘Endangerment’ Lawsuits Filed Against EPA Before Deadline“:

Industry groups, conservative think tanks, lawmakers and three states filed 16 court challenges to U.S. EPA’s “endangerment” finding for greenhouse gases before yesterday’s deadline, setting the stage for a legal battle over federal climate policies.

Filing petitions yesterday were the Ohio Coal Association, the Utility Air Regulatory Group, the Portland Cement Association, the state of Texas and the Competitive Enterprise Institute. Another was filed by a coalition that includes the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM), the American Petroleum Institute, the Corn Refiners Association, the National Association of Home Builders, the National Oilseed Processors Association, the National Petrochemical and Refiners Association, and the Western States Petroleum Association

From the Competitive Enterprise Institute, “New Lawsuit, Petition Challenge EPA Global Warming Regulations After Lead Global Warming Scientist Admits Data Sloppiness, No Warming.”

Earlier posts:

• States Resist Imperial EPA’s Power Grab on CO2 Regulation
• NAM, Business Groups Challenge EPA Endangerment Finding

Office of Gov. Rick Perry, Texas, “Texas Takes Legal Action Against Federal Government Over EPA CO2 Mandates“:

AUSTIN – Gov. Rick Perry, Attorney General Greg Abbott and Agriculture Commissioner Todd Staples today announced that the state is taking legal action in the U.S. Court of Appeals challenging the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) endangerment finding for greenhouse gases.

“Texas is aggressively seeking its future in alternative energy through incentives and innovation, not mandates and overreaching regulation,” Gov. Perry said. “The EPA’s misguided plan paints a big target on the backs of Texas agriculture and energy producers and the hundreds of thousands of Texans they employ. This legal action is being taken to protect the Texas economy and the jobs that go with it, as well as defend Texas’ freedom to continue our successful environmental strategies free from federal overreach.”

• Petition for Reconsideration of Endangerment Cause
• Petition for Review

Washington Post, “Virginia challenges U.S. greenhouse gas curbs”

Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli II (R) on Tuesday filed paperwork attacking the legal underpinnings of an Obama administration effort to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, joining a crowd of political conservatives and business groups with similar objections.

Cuccinelli sent a petition to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, asking the agency to reconsider its finding in December that greenhouse gases pose a danger to public health by contributing to climate change. That finding is a legal trigger, which would allow the EPA to regulate those gases under the Clean Air Act, the same way it regulates the pollutants that cause smog.

Cuccinelli also filed a separate petition asking a federal court to review the EPA’s finding.

See also Richmond Times-Dispatch, “Va. challenges EPA’s stance on global warming”

The National Association of Manufacturers and other major business and agriculture groups also filed a petition for review on Tuesday.

After closing out 2009 with a formal “endangerment finding” for greenhouse gas emissions and a separate rulemaking for first-time regulation of greenhouse gases from industrial sources, the Environmental Protection Agency today announced that it seeks to impose even stricter national standards for ground-level ozone, or smog. These major regulations, taken as a whole, pose a serious threat to the country’s attempt to climb out of the deepest economic downturn since the 1930s.

Today’s action comes less than two years after EPA issued a new standard for ozone in 2008, which already lowered the 1998 standard from 0.84 parts per million (ppm) to 0.75 ppm. Federal regulators are proposing stricter standards despite the fact that EPA’s own data show a 25 percent decline of smog concentrations nationwide from 1980 to 2008.

While federal regulators claim public health as the main rationale for stricter standards, the Administration appears to ignore potential impacts on the health of the economy. According to EPA’s own statistics, which are generally understated, new ozone rules will cost anywhere from $19 billion to $90 billion. When the National Association of Manufacturers advocated against stricter standards in 2007 — proposed even as the 1998 standard was still being implemented — the NAM and its industry partners developed maps showing the potential reach of stricter regulations. According to this 2007 analysis, a standard in the range EPA is proposing, between 0.60 and 0.70 ppm, more than 1,200 counties in all the lower 48 states – except Montana – would carry the regulatory burden of a so-called “non-attainment” designation from EPA. Such a classification means new controls on everything ranging from construction activity (stimulus, anyone?) to transportation fuel blends and emissions from increasingly smaller stationary sources.

The Clean Air Act is broken and susceptible to endless litigation, as today’s announcement will undoubtedly demonstrate. The NAM urges federal lawmakers to implement modern, rational, predictable and streamlined environmental policies that will foster economic growth, while not otherwise penalizing environmental progress. In the context of continued declining ozone levels nationwide, today’s announcement shows that with EPA, no good deed goes unpunished.

Bryan Brendle is Director of Energy and Resources Policy for the National Association of Manufacturers.

Even as the Environmental Protection Agency attempts to replace Congress as the policymaking branch of government with its endangerment finding for carbon dioxide under the Clean Air Act, the agency also pursues other, less prominent but still burdensome regulations. On Tuesday, Jan. 5, for example, the EPA is holding a daylong hearing in Atlanta to take public comment on its proposed regulation to place new restrictions on sulfur dioxide emissions. (EPA news release, EPA’s resource page on sulfur dioxide.)

Bryan Brendle, the National Association of Manufacturers’ Director of Energy and Resources Policy, summarizes the issue and state of play:

• EPA is proposing to strengthen its “National Ambient Air Quality Standard” for emissions of Sulfur Dioxide (SO2) as part of a mandatory review of the standard. Final comments are due on February 8.
• EPA is holding a public hearing on the standard, which is meant to protect vulnerable populations such as asthmatics, in Atlanta on Jan. 5. Sectors most affected by a stricter SO2 standard include the chemical sector, aluminum sector and the petroleum refining sectors.
• EPA’s proposed regulation constitutes one of many, which cumulatively, will have an adverse impact on the recovery of the manufacturing economy.
• EPA is moving forward with this proposed regulation in the wake of its rulemaking on the “tailoring proposal,” which closed on Dec. 28 and a formal “endangerment finding” for greenhouse gases, which occurred on Dec. 7. [See Brendle's testimony to the EPA on the tailoring proposal.]
• In addition to proposed rules for greenhouse gases, EPA is also expected to issue a proposed regulation that will tighten the air quality standard for ozone emissions.

Bottom line:

• EPA’s proposal reflects a deeply flawed process under the Clean Air Act, whereby the agency moves forward with stricter standards for individual pollutants with no regard to economic impacts or even administrative consistency with respect to other rulemakings.

The EPA’s imperial endangerment edict also serves to focus the media on that one issue, the regulation of greenhouse gases, meaning that economy-damaging proposals like the sulfur dioxide rule receive less public attention. Another example: the revised standards for ground-level ozone, a widely reported issue in 2007 and 2008, but largely ignored more recently.

So we hear lots about the Administration emphasizing jobs, jobs, jobs, but not so much about the Administration’s EPA making it more difficult to create jobs, jobs, jobs.

Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) this afternoon spoke on the Senate floor to announce her intention to challenge the Environmental Protection Agency’s endangerment finding through legislation. From her news release, “Murkowski Seeks to Halt EPA Endangerment of U.S. Economy”:

WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, today announced her intention to file a disapproval resolution to stop the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from regulating greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act. Murkowski’s resolution comes in the wake of the agency’s recent endangerment finding, which will result in damaging new regulations that endanger America’s economy.

“I remain committed to reducing emissions through a policy that will protect our environment and strengthen our economy, but EPA’s backdoor climate regulations achieve neither of those goals,” Murkowski said. “EPA regulation must be taken off the table so that we can focus on more responsible approaches to dealing with global climate change.”

While the administration claims the endangerment finding is merely an affirmation of the science behind global climate change, Murkowski said that aspect is just the tip of the iceberg.

“The EPA administrator’s move has thrown open the door to expensive and intrusive government regulation – as far from a market-based solution as we can possibly imagine,” Murkowski said. “The endangerment finding is aptly named. It endangers jobs, it endangers economic growth, and it endangers American competitiveness, while setting the stage for backdoor bureaucratic intrusion into the lives of Americans on an unprecedented scale.

The Congressional Review Act allows the filing of a resolution of disapproval to executive branch regulations. It has been used once before, in 2001 to reverse President Clinton’s last-minute issuance of workplace ergonomics standards. Once Murkowski files the resolution, it will go to the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, and if not acted upon, can be discharged if 30 Senators sign a petition. A disapproval resolution cannot be filibustered.

This is an issue that should unite Republicans and Democrats alike: The Executive Branch has ignored Congress’ constitutional authority to make policy, and is through a regulatory power grab attempting to control huge portions of the economy — and people’s lives — by limiting carbon dioxide emissions.