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.

Kim Strassel’s “Potomac Watch” column in today’s Wall Street Journal is based on an interview with Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK), ranking member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, reacting to the climate science e-mail controversy. It’s Inhofe who gives Strassel’s column its title, “‘Cap and Trade Is Dead’,” arguing that politics and the now the scientific scandal from East Anglia makes climate-control legislation impossible. That’s Congress, but …

There’s still the EPA, which is preparing an “endangerment finding” that would allow it to regulate carbon on the grounds it is a danger to public health. It is here the emails might have the most direct effect. The agency has said repeatedly that it based its finding on the U.N. science—which is now at issue. The scandal puts new pressure on the EPA to accede to growing demands to make public the scientific basis of its actions.

Mr. Inhofe goes so far as to suggest that the agency might not now issue the finding. “The president knows how punitive this will be; he’s never wanted to do it through [the EPA] because that’s all on him.” The EPA was already out on a legal limb with its finding, and Mr. Inhofe argues that if it does go ahead, the CRU disclosure guarantees court limbo. “The way the far left used to stop us is to file lawsuits and stall and stall. We’ll do the same thing.”

An EPA endangerment finding and implementation of CO2 emission limits through a “tailoring rule” is legally suspect, to be sure, as an attempt by the Executive Branch to rewrite the Clean Air Act. Still, all the statements from the EPA and Administrator Lisa Jackson have pointed in that direction.
More…

• Related commentary in The Telegraph, United Kingdom, by Gerald Warner, “Climategate e-mails sweep America, may scuttle Barack Obama’s Cap and Trade laws.“
• The Wall Street Journal Europe editorializes in “How to Forge a Consensus,” contending in the sub-headline, “The impression left by the Climategate emails is that the global warming game has been rigged from the start.”
• The New York Times reports on Nov. 25, “Businesses in U.S. Brace for New Rules on Emissions.” The story covers President Obama’s announcement of emission reduction targets, made in anticipation of his trip to the Copenhagen climate meeting. It’s OK, although the failure to mention Climategate and the possibility of an EPA endangerment finding seems like pretty big holes.