Friday, April 17, 2009
The return of the regulatory state: Administrating GHGs, rather than legislating them
The Environmental Protection Agency ruled today that carbon dioxide and four other greenhouse gases were "pollutants," which gives it broad authority under existing law to regulate emissions. Its current finding relates only to the pollutants that come out of motor vehicles, but there is apparently nothing in law or logic to prevent its extension to other sectors of the economy. In theory, the Environmental Protection Agency could now be the regulator of, well, everything, at least insofar as an activity generates carbon dioxide. Scary stuff, especially with one party in control of both Congress and the White House.
Anyway, the law firm of Latham & Watkins has already produced a "client alert" (pdf) on the subject. It is written for non-lawyers, and gives the reader a sense of the breadth of the EPA's power and the pressure on it from activists.
Of course, the real effect of this decision is to put the power to regulate greenhouse gases effectively beyond political accountability. The only real constraint will come from the White House, which will be forced to "politicize" science if it is to avoid a massive backlash at the polls.
In perhaps unrelated news, the April level of Arctic sea ice was greater than it has been in seven years according to the Japanese, and five years according to the Danes. Global sea ice continues to spike smartly above the 1979-1990 "satellite era" mean, now exceeding that "baseline" by almost a million square kilometers.
CWCID: Glenn Reynolds.
13 Comments:
By 
, at
Fri Apr 17, 10:11:00 PM:
carbon dioxide and four other greenhouse gases were "pollutants," which gives it broad authority under existing law to regulate emissionsDoes this mean the EPA will now fine me if I eat too many beans?
By , at
Fri Apr 17, 10:18:00 PM:
Hmmm. Trying to raise the economy out of recession while simultaneously stamping on it with a large boot marked "EPA." How....Obamaian.
In the words of the great philosopher Jerry Seinfeld, "Good luck with all that."
By 
Ray, at
Fri Apr 17, 10:43:00 PM:
This sort of overreach by an executive branch agency imperils the legitimacy of its actions. Just ask George Bush how well his attempt to expand executive power in wiretapping using administrative measures under current law worked for him.
By , at
Fri Apr 17, 11:05:00 PM:
If you think that CO2 is a pollutant, I suggest that for the sake of Gaia you stop breathing.
JLW III
By , at
Sat Apr 18, 03:25:00 AM:
Hmmm. Trying to raise the economy out of recession while simultaneously stamping on it with a large boot marked "EPA." How....Obamaian.Most voters are not aware of EPA regulatory actions and the side effects thereof. It's a deniable way to trash the economy (see Cloward-Piven) while publicly taking credit for trying to fix the economy.
By JPMcT, at
Sat Apr 18, 07:10:00 AM:
Hmmm....C02 a pollutant?
Bad news if you are a plant!
If the truth be known, OXYGEN is more of a pollutant than CO2...it causes retrolental fibroplasia in newborns, rust, oxidation of innumerable vital conmpounds, forms peroxidases which are quite lethal, leads to free radical formation...the final common pathway in ageing and death.
....and it's highly flammable to boot!
AND ...It's 21% of our atmosphere!!!
When is the EPA GOING TO DO SOMETHING ABOUT THIS TOXIC SUBSTANCE!!
We need to act NOW, before the "scales tip" and we are all doomed.
Please send me money and I will take care of this for you....
By davod, at
Sat Apr 18, 07:32:00 AM:
Danes, Japanese - Heck, who can trust anything they say. They don't even speak English as a native language. I bet this is the result of bad translations (Pun).
By , at
Sat Apr 18, 08:46:00 AM:
We should end our toxic way of life, we have no right to destroy the entire planet just so we can live comfortably. Cities need to be torn down and people need to return to a vegan oriented agrarian lifestyle. Highways should be ripped up, trucks and auto use strictly curtailed and in fact it is advisable that vehicle use be quickly limited to critical resource transport only. Worst of all, there are too many people. For the good of the planet we need to address that problem and fast. We finally have a government that understands the need to end the modern economy and attack the population numbers!
By Georg Felis, at
Sat Apr 18, 09:57:00 AM:
The EPA decision is totally bizarre, it regulates carbon dioxide (CO2)and methane (CH4) while ignoring the biggest GW gas of all time. Water vapor.
When I first saw it, I did my own form of silent protest. Breathe in. Breathe out. I'm polluting, come and get me copper.
By , at
Sat Apr 18, 10:57:00 AM:
I wonder what the founding fathers would think of unaccountable, parasitic, bureaucratic microbes writing laws that the rest of us must obey? These laws, misnamed 'regulations' are not approved by Congress and signed off by the POTUS. Would someone please show me the clause in the Constitution where a body other than the Congress is allowed to write law for the USA? At the very least, all regulations should be voted on by Congress and signed off by the POTUS before they become law.
By , at
Sat Apr 18, 11:42:00 AM:
I'm no administrative law expert certainly, but isn't the administrative state founded in the commerce clause? If the founders ever imagined that the commerce clause would be used by the government to regulate general commerce out of existence I'm sure the clause would have been written differently and far more stringently, but who among us would have imagined junk science raised to this level? We get the government we want, and there are many people in this country who wanted this government.
By davod, at
Sat Apr 18, 11:50:00 AM:
Happy Days:
Bringing Per Capita Carbon Emissions Down to Below 1700s Levels. The most dangerous proposal in the new budget is the institution of a cap-and-trade system for carbon emissions Indeed, the single largest source of new tax revenue in the budget going forward are these payments to be made by businesses for the right to emit excess carbon.
The goal is an 83%" reduction in carbon emissions by 2050 compared to 2005 levels.
That would bring US per capita emissions of CO2 down to a level below what we had in the 1700s.
* http://taxprof.typepad.com/.a/6a00d8341c4eab53ef0111689b3b64970c-popup
** http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-cap-and-tradefeb27,0,5872133.story
By Dawnfire82, at
Sat Apr 18, 01:16:00 PM:
And people make fun of Texans for muttering about secession.
