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CPP2

3/16 clean power plan 2 

see CCP 3 ACE 619

almost all of the 25-7 state AG suing are RAGA (not tenn TVA giu; Koster is ex-gop)

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CONTEXT SHADOW DOCKET EMERGENCY CPP

AN 4 26

Last week, internal memos from an obscure 2016 Supreme Court decision were leaked by The New York Times, showing shocking revelations about Chief Justice John Roberts, who frequently plays a public role as a non-partisan justice, but behind the scenes, he's being exposed for his right-leaning slant.

In an analysis about it on Tuesday, Slate's Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern explained that this ruling is what began the "shadow docket."

AlterNet highlighted a piece by Georgetown University Law School Professor Steve Vladeck last week, calling out the legal flubs. Vladeck, who wrote the book on the "shadow docket," discussed the 2016 ruling, which had zero oversight and made significant changes to the U.S. legal system, all over a power grab in opposition to President Barack Obama's administration.

For years, conservatives have complained about the "shadow docket," calling it judicial secrecy and implying it was "bad motives to a benign emergency procedure that operates according to neutral legal principles," the Slate report said. The newly released memos "reveal exactly why the Republican-appointed justices don’t want to shine public or academic light on this practice: If this leak is any indication, the public would be aghast to see the brazenly political, spin-soaked flimflam that goes into deciding these critical cases."

When the high court stepped in to block the "Clean Power Plan" in 2016 with nothing more than a paragraph, while Justice Elena Kagan blasted it as "unprecedented." But it's the Supreme Court, so this set the new precedent, and what has followed is a decade of anti-green technology. Red states jumped in with a "Hail Mary" to stop the new EPA rules from going into effect and the conservatives on the court agreed.

"At the time, SCOTUS had never before frozen an executive branch policy while an appeals court was still reviewing it (and had already refused to grant a stay)," the legal analysts explained. That was what happened in this case. The D.C. Circuit Court hasn't even heard arguments over the case yet. Meanwhile, because the requirements didn't take effect until 2018, states had years to address them in court. Fossil fuel companies were given six years to prepare.

But the conservative justices still claimed there was a huge sense of urgency, and they needed to step in to stop everything from moving forward.

The leaked memos from Roberts and Justice Stephen Breyer, exchanged with their colleagues, show how they came to the conclusion that it was an "emergency" and that the shadow docket needed to step in.

"Perhaps most shockingly, this correspondence reveals that it was the chief justice who pressed hardest for a swift and sweeping decision, and that his reasoning had far more to do with presidential politics and personal grievance than any majestic legal logic," wrote Stern and Lithwick.

"More than anything, the new reporting puts the lie to the hollow claims of the chief justice sitting astride a mythical 3–3–3 court where his measured centrism guides the nation through partisan times. It is now manifestly clear that Roberts is himself a top partisan operator, especially under the cover of secrecy and internal norms of collegiality and confidentiality," they added.

While Vladeck detailed the legal mistakes in the ruling, Lithwick and Stern bashed Roberts for his catty snit, claiming that Obama shouldn't be able to "transform a substantial swath of the nation’s economy" without it being "tested by this Court before it is presented as a fait accompli. But it seems that the EPA is sufficiently confident of this rule’s immediate implications that not even the combined efforts of Congress and the President could reverse its effects.”

The Slate writers called Roberts' "glib" reaction particularly rich, given he has spent the past decade voting "to let the Trump administration implement a policy with immense, irreversible national consequences before his court has approved it on the merits."

The only way that they can read the comments from Roberts (and supported by Justice Samuel Alito) is that they were somehow offended, Lithwick and Stern said. "That the Obama administration, by way of comments, was somehow disrespecting the high court."

In Alito's memo, he claimed that the regulations would make a “nullity” of the court’s power and “institutional legitimacy," the piece said. Roberts went so far as to attack the EPA administrator, saying that if they didn't stop the rule immediately, then everything would be "functionally irreversible."

It wasn't a personal attack; it was an attack on the court as an institution. "Obama’s EPA was allegedly short-circuiting the court’s much-prized supremacy, and needed to be put in its place," the legal analysts explained.

The result has been the Supreme Court's "profoundly flawed analysis" of how to define an "emergency" so that they can "rubber-stamp policies and practices that seem dubiously meritorious, with adverse effects on millions of people waved away," the analysis closed.

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https://www.eenews.net/articles/meet-the-lawyers-teeing-up-the-supreme-court-climate-showdown/

1/22

as arguments approach in the most significant Supreme Court environment battle of the decade, teams of lawyers are already making their case for how the justices should view EPA’s climate authority.

When the justices take the bench on Feb. 28 to hear arguments in West Virginia v. EPA,they will arrive armed with information from reams of briefs prepared by some of the nation’s leading environmental lawyers.

Those attorneys’ arguments will lay the groundwork in a high-stakes case that has the potential to upend EPA’s ability to regulate greenhouse gases from power plants — one of the nation’s largest sources of carbon dioxide emissions.

the challenge — brought by Republican-led states and coal companies — asks the Supreme Court to overturn a ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit that struck down a Trump-era EPA rule gutting the Obama-era Clean Power Plan.

The 2015 Obama rule invoked EPA’s authority under theClean Air Actto set systemwide requirements for power plant emissions reductions.

After the D.C. Circuit ruling, President Biden’s EPA had a clean slate to craft its own rule. The agency had said it would not return to the Clean Power Plan, whose goals have already been met by the power sector, even though the regulation never took effect.

The justices then took the unusual step of agreeing to hear a dispute over a regulation that does not technically exist.

Their ruling in the case, which is expected by next summer, could not only constrain EPA from issuing a comprehensive new carbon rule but also prevent Congress from handing off broad regulatory authority to federal agencies.

Here are some of the lawyers to know in this year’s high court climate slugfest:

Lindsay See

Leading the briefs for West Virginia is Lindsay See, the state’s solicitor general.

The coal-rich state, joined by 18 others, filed the first plea for the Supreme Court to weigh in on EPA’s climate authority. It was followed by three other petitions, which are now consolidated in one massive case.

See has served as West Virginia’s leading litigator since 2017 and previously worked as an associate atGibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP, a firm with a prominent Supreme Court practice.

She has appeared once before the nation’s highest bench, in a 2018 case related to a discrimination challenge against an exemption in West Virginia tax law that protected state and local — but not federal — employees from having their pension benefits taxed. West Virginia lost the case.

West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey (R) and other state lawyers said the D.C. Circuit should not have allowed EPA to regulate power plant emissions under a “rarely used, ancillary provision of the Clean Air Act.” They referred to Section 111(d) of the statute, which served as the basis for the carbon rule.

“Save for a few general factors EPA was to take into account, the lower court told EPA it has ‘no limits’ on the emission-related measures it can impose — on any economic sector or almost any actor,” says the states’ most recent brief, which was signed off on by See.

See is a Harvard Law School graduate and clerked for former D.C. Circuit Judge Thomas Griffith.

Paul Seby

One other state has echoed West Virginia’s arguments in a petition and brief led by a lawyer who has been involved in the EPA carbon rule battle since the Clean Power Plan days.

Paul Seby, a shareholder at the firm Greenberg Traurig LLP and special assistant to North Dakota Attorney General Wayne Stenehjem (R), signed off on a brief that said the D.C. Circuit ruling “undermines the cooperative federalism framework carefully crafted by Congress” by finding that EPA — rather than states — can set power plant performance standards.

North Dakota v. EPA is one of the four petitions in the consolidated Supreme Court case.

Seby has argued against EPA carbon regulations before, back when the Clean Power Plan was before the D.C. Circuit. The court held a marathon argument over the regulation in 2016 but never reached a ruling.

Earlier that year, the Supreme Court had blocked the rule from taking effect, which allowed the Trump administration to dismantle it.

Seby holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of San Diego and a law degree from Lewis & Clark College.

Andrew Grossman

One of the other lead petitioners in the climate case, Westmoreland Mining Holdings LLC, hired Andrew Grossman to make its case to the high court.

Grossman leadsBakerHostetler’s appellate practice and is a frequent conservative commentator on wide range of administrative and constitutional issues.

Grossman is an adjunct scholar at the libertarian Cato Institute and a former legal analyst at the Heritage Foundation. He’s also a familiar face on Capitol Hill, having testified several times before the House and Senate Judiciary committees.

In Westmoreland’s petition, Grossman raised what some environmental advocates referred to as a killer question: whether EPA may use Section 111(d) to create performance standards for existing stationary sources under the provision’s “hazardous air pollutants” program.

The justices granted the petition alongside others, but they said they would only consider the second question posed by Westmoreland’s petition: whether EPA’s carbon rule violated the major questions doctrine, which restricts federal agencies from deciding issues of “vast economic and political significance.”

Grossman attended Dartmouth College and theGeorge Mason University’s  SCALIA School of Law.

Yaakow Roth

The fourth petition in the consolidated case comes from North American Coal Corp., represented byJones Daypartner Yaakov Roth.

Like the other challengers, the coal company argues that EPA and the D.C. Circuit have taken far too broad a view of federal climate authority under the Clean Air Act.

Roth comes to the EPA climate case with lots of experience before the Supreme Court. He was the brainchild behind an argument that led the Supreme Court to overturn convictions in the New Jersey “Bridgegate” scandal.

He has also fought to preserve restrictive voting laws in Arizona and to dismantle the Obama-era Affordable Care Act.

Roth has clerked for the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia and a federal appeals court judge.

He is a graduate of Harvard University and York University.

Elizabeth Prelogar

Before the Supreme Court agreed to hear West Virginia v. EPA, Elizabeth Prelogar had argued on behalf of the federal agency that it was too early for the justices to get involved.

The solicitor general noted in a brief filed in August that Biden’s EPA has not yet written a new carbon rule and has no plans to revive the Obama plan.

EPA instead intends to issue a new rule “after taking into account all relevant considerations, including changes to the electricity sector that have occurred during the last several years,” she wrote.

Prelogar, who was confirmed in late October, has already made several appearances before the Supreme Court, including in one case in which she argued on behalf of the federal government against abortion laws in Mississippi and Texas.

Since her appointment as acting solicitor general in January, Prelogar has also led Supreme Court briefs in several environmental cases, including one in which the Biden administration backed efforts by the developer of the PennEast natural gas pipeline to acquire state-owned land in New Jersey (Energywire, March 10, 2021). The pipeline company won its case, but the project was eventually canceled.

Prelogar, a Harvard Law School graduate, has previously served as assistant to the solicitor general and has worked in private practice. During a prior stint at the Justice Department, she served on the special counsel’s investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election.

She clerked for Attorney General Merrick Garland when he was a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and for Supreme Court Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Elena Kagan.

Prelogar is the second woman to be confirmed as solicitor general. Kagan was the first.

Sean Donahue

Environmental groups that support broad EPA regulatory authority have turned to an experienced Supreme Court litigator to represent them in the case: Sean Donahue.

Donahue has been a go-to lawyer for environmental groups and public health advocates in some of the most high-profile litigation of the last decade, including Clean Air Act and climate cases.

He’s also represented environmentalists in key cases on the social cost of carbon for fuel economy and vehicle emissions standards.

Donahue and his team, including the Environmental Defense Fund’s Vickie Patton, will have a challenging task ahead of them. Several conservative justices have signaled skepticism of doctrines requiring them to defer to agency expertise, and the current case appears to be a coordinated effort to curtail EPA’s regulatory authority broadly.

In an interview, Donahue said once again it may be an environmental case that set an important precedent for administrative law.

"Statutes like the Clean Air Act," he said, "necessarily depend upon expert agencies to apply Congress’ health and environmental directives to complex factual records, developing technologies, about particular industries and pollutants."

Donahue, who works for Donahue, Goldberg & Littleton, clerked for former Supreme Court Justices Ginsburg and John Paul Stevens. He’s also a veteran of the Justice Department. He attended Columbia University and University of Chicago’s Law School.

Beth Brinkmann

Another attorney with Supreme Court experience is making the case for electric utilities that want to preserve the D.C. Circuit decision striking down the Trump-era carbon rule.

Before the justices granted the case, Covington & Burling LLP partner Beth Brinkmann led a brief on behalf of Consolidated Edison Inc. and other companies that said Supreme Court review of a nonexistent regulation would run the risk of a “ruling untethered to actual circumstances.”

Moreover, she wrote, the red states and coal companies are seeking relief from the justices even as the power industry has achieved the Clean Power Plan’s 2030 emissions reductions targets more than a decade in advance —even though the rule never officially took effect.

“Those changes, which include reductions in the cost of emission-reduction technologies and increasing consumer preferences for clean power, have only accelerated since adoption of the ACE Rule,” she wrote.

Brinkmann has argued more than two dozen times before the Supreme Court. As former deputy assistant attorney general at the Justice Department’s civil rights division, for example, she defended the Obama administration’s Affordable Care Act.

She has also worked in the appellate practice at the firm Morrison & Foerster and as an assistant federal public defender representing indigent criminal defendants.

Brinkmann is a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley, and Yale Law School. She clerked for the late Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun.

Elbert Lin

A utility industry group that opposes EPA’s ability to craft rules like the Clean Power Plan has staffed its legal team with an attorney who, at only 43 years old, has already made a significant impact on environmental law at the Supreme Court.

Elbert Lin was the lawyer who secured the unprecedented stay of President Obama’s climate regulatory regime, theClean Power Plan, in 2016while he was West Virginia’s solicitor general.

Lin said in an interview that his interest in environmental and administrative law was born out of necessity when he was West Virginia’s solicitor general. It was during Obama’s second term, and the administration was promulgating many major environmental rules, including the Clean Power Plan.

"Environmental regulations were of significant importance of the state," he said.

Now in private practice at the firm Hunton Andrews Kurth LLP, Lin is back in the EPA carbon rule litigation, representing America’s Power, a trade association of companies that produce electricity from coal.

Lin, who is the son of Taiwanese immigrants, has also argued key Clean Water Act cases at the high court. He argued on behalf of Maui, Hawaii, in a case over whether a federal permit is required for pollution that is pumped underground but eventually reaches the ocean.

The Supreme Court delivered a new test for determining whether a permit was needed, and a federal judge in Hawaii later sided with environmental groups arguing that Maui should have secured a Clean Water Act approval (Greenwire, Oct. 21, 2021). Legal experts say they are watching to see how other courts apply the Supreme Court’s test.

Lin attended Yale for undergrad and law school, and heclerked for a federal appeals court judge and Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.

Reporters Lesley Clark and Niina H. Farah contributed.

NBCoC MISI BS study:

ref 3

404 --> WB  https://blog.ucsusa.org/john-rogers/new-flawed-study-of-the-clean-power-plan-how-the-misi-study-gets-it-so-wrong-759

JUNE 12, 2015, 

no lnx many

an op-ed in yesterday’s Investor’s Business Daily uses a new study to make unsubstantiated claims about the economic impacts of the proposed Clean Power Plan on vulnerable communities. Since the op-ed didn’t provide a link to the actual analysis, we hunted it down and took a look behind the headlines. And when we did, we found that the foundations of this new “analysis” are shaky indeed.

A house built on sand

The new study, conducted by Management Information Services, Inc. (MISI) on behalf of the National Black Chamber of Commerce (NBCC), purports to look at a range of EPA regulations, but focuses on the Clean Power Plan (CPP).

energy-clean-power-plan-black-chamber-of-commerce-study-cover-not-science

But here’s the first of the study’s fatal flaws: it depends, as it explicitly says (p. 21), on the findings of seven other studies, which it lists. But those seven include:

Three studies that came out before the EPA published the draft CPP, meaning they don’t actually study the CPP as proposed—even though that’s the supposed focus of the NBCC/MISI analysis

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One that was just (self-described) “preliminary analysis” from the United Mine Workers of America, a group you’d be hard-pressed to characterize as an unbiased voice in this debate

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Three other studies funded by other fossil fuel interests who oppose the Clean Power Plan

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Two of those studies were the focus of a recent UCS webinar showing how such studies use bad assumptions and get used to sow confusion and spread disinformation about the CPP.

One of those, done byIHS on behalf of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, is the report most cited in this new work, even though it was one of those that came out before the draft CPP, and even though there was, as the Chamber itself admitted, “a big difference” between what they’d modeled and what EPA put forth (which the new study doesn’t acknowledge).

The flaws in the study by Energy Ventures Analysis (EVA) for Peabody Energy (the largest U.S. coal company) are also clear. The Center for Climate and Energy Solutions has pointed out that, unlike other studies, EVA’s didn’t even show a business-as-usual case, meaning that any CPP results were floating in a vacuum, without reference to a base case of shifting energy costs and other economic factors.

Ignoring the bedrock

Equally telling are the studies that didn’t make NBCC/MISI’s literature review:

The EPA’s own cost-benefit analysis, which showed investments in energy efficiency under the Clean Power Plan will ultimately generate savings on electricity bills nationally

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Studies from academic sources, which show the CPP delivering widespread health co-benefits by reducing harmful air pollution from power plants

One by the NAACP that has documented the costly and disproportionate impacts of power plant pollution on “low-income communities and communities of color”

Another recent analysis by researchers at the University of Maryland suggesting the CPP will lead to a net increase in jobs.

But you wouldn’t glean any of that from the new NBCC/MISI report. No, it follows in the footsteps of previous misleading studies by exaggerating the costs and ignoring the benefits of climate action.

The elephant in the neighborhood

And that brings up another of the study’s fatal flaws: it forgets about climate change. In the op-ed, the only mention of “mitigation” is about avoiding the supposed impacts of the regulation. And even in the study itself, nary a word.

If you ignore the benefits side of the cost-benefit equation, it's hard to come up with anything but bad news. But when you take a solid look at both sides of the equation, you see a pretty impressive net-positive.

Hard to believe, I realize. But somehow the author makes it through the entire study without mentioning global warming. This, a purported study of a regulation, but it doesn’t even acknowledge the incredible amount of science behind the need for just such a regulation. All it’s got is one mention of “warmer climates” and the importance of air-conditioning… which, it turns out, we’ll need more of as the climate warms.

And who is going to be disproportionately affected by that warming climate and other impacts? In many cases, the same vulnerable populations that the new study is supposedly defending.

On the other hand, that grievous omission isn’t entirely surprising, since the author of the study has claimed—despite the wealth of information very much to the contrary—that more carbon dioxide is actually a good thing. Not so much.

Poor science, bad policy

It all adds up to a study that Juan Declet-Barreto of the Natural Resources Defense Council calls:

“…a cynical attempt at co-opting the Latino and African American communities into rejecting the most significant controls to power sector air pollutants and toxics affecting their health and communities.”

The Clean Power Plan is about the fundamental need to address climate change, including on behalf of those who are least equipped to deal with its impacts. A study of the CPP that forgets that isn’t worth the electrons it’s printed on.

Poor science may make for good headlines, but it definitely makes for bad policy.

JOHN ROGERS is a senior energy analyst with expertise in renewable energy and energy efficiency technologies and policies. SEE JOHN'S FULL BIO.

lnx

https://www.nationalreview.com/2016/05/climate-change-attorneys-general/

no lnx

POLITICS & POLICY

The Climate-Change Gang

By SCOTT PRUITT

& LUTHER STRANGE

May 17, 2016

The Obama administration lawlessly rewards its supporters and punishes its enemies.

The United States was born out of a revolution against, in the words of the Declaration of Independence, an “arbitrary government” that put men on trial “for pretended offences”and “abolish[ed] the Free System of English laws.” Brave men and women stood up to that oppressive government, and this, the greatest democracy of them all, one that is governed by the rule of law and not by men, is the product.

Some of our states have forgotten this founding principle and are acting less like Jefferson and Adams and more like George III. A group of Democratic attorneys general has announced it intends to criminally investigate oil and gas companies that have disputed the science behind man-made global warming. Backed bygreen-energy interests and environmentalist lobbying groups, the coalition has promised to use intrusive investigations, costly litigation, and criminal prosecutions to silence critics of its climate-change agenda. Pretended offenses, indeed.

We won’t be joining this coalition, and we hope that those attorneys general who have joined will disavow it. Healthy debate is the lifeblood of American democracy, and global warming has inspired one of the major policy debates of our time. That debate is far from settled. Scientists continue to disagree about the degree and extent of global warming and its connection to the actions of mankind. That debate should be encouraged — in classrooms, public forums, and the halls of Congress. It should not be silenced with threats of prosecution. Dissent is not a crime.

RELATED: Obama’s Latest Executive Action: Spend Hundreds of Billions to Not Help the Environment]

Sadly, this isn’t the first time we’ve seen this tactic of advancing the climate-change agenda by any means necessary. President Obama’s Clean Power Plan is a particularly noteworthy example. This EPA regulation, one of the most ambitious ever proposed, will shutter coal-fired power plants, significantly increase the price of electricity for American consumers, and enact by executive fiat the very same cap-and-trade system for carbon emissions that Congress has rejected.

The Clean Power Plan was promulgated without any consultation with Congress.No bills were debated, no votes were taken, and the representatives of the American people had no opportunity to object or offer their own suggestions. The checks and balances built into our system of government were simply ignored as inconvenient impediments to the president’s agenda.

The Clean Power Plan was promulgated without any consultation with Congress. No bills were debated, no votes were taken.

But in our states, we believe in and govern with respect for the rule of law, rather than by ambition to use the power of our governments to stifle political opponents. That is why we are part of a very different kind of coalition, a coalition of 29 states seeking to vindicate the rule of law by challenging the legality of the Clean Power Plan in our courts. The 29 states and state attorneys general who are part of this effort respect our proper role, which is neither to pick winners and losers in the energy sectornor to silence those with whom we disagree. Rather, our job is to hold the EPA accountableto the laws that created it and to fulfill our statutory duties to ensure that consumers in our states have access to reliable, affordable energy. We will continue to pursue those goals and to present our arguments in the courts and in the public square, treating our opponents with the respect they deserve.

RELATED: Obama’s ‘Clean Power Plan’ Punishes Workers, Consumers, and States That Voted for Romney]

It’s unfortunate that this respect is not always returned. In their press conference, the group of state attorneys general called themselves an “unprecedented coalition.” On this point, they are correct. Rarely in our nation’s history has the police power of the state been so eagerly used to intimidate citizens [corporations?] into silence.

But even more troubling are internal e-mails and other documents that indicate that this coercion was orchestrated not by the attorneys general themselves, but by green-energy advocacy groups using these officials as puppets to further their extreme agendas. This should frighten us all. Outside groups should not be able to use the power of the government as a sword to go after their political opponents.

We do not doubt the sincerity of the beliefs of our fellow attorneys general about climate change and the role human activity plays in it. [why/how could you? thy can and shd doubt yours?] But we call upon them to press those beliefs through debate [like in a courtroom?], not through governmental intimidation of those who disagree with them. Few things could be more un-American.

— Scott Pruitt is the attorney general of Oklahoma. Luther Strange is the attorney general of Alabama.

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lomborg tag archive BS eg CPP

https://us5.campaign-archive.com/?u=40608ac93880d1cb2444f1d20&id=cde62a1e98

trump's energy order won't ruin the planet

President Trump's executive order on energy and climate

policies has induced much criticism from environmental groups. In USA Today, Lomborg shows that the scrapped Clean Power Plan would only ever have reduced temperature rises by 0.023°F (0.013°C) at the end of this century.

Trump's order shows that the Paris climate treaty is merely a toothless "paper tiger" which can't fix global warming.

For that, we need green R&D

https://www.businessinsider.com/donald-trump-climate-change-chinese-hoax-2016-11?op=1

i am sorta suprised he knew what cpp is tho recall all regs bad, all BO actins bad, all energy regs esp bad

Trump has also expressed the desire to ramp up the fossil-fuel production and re-start the Keystone pipeline process; both decisions that would be detrimental to the environment.

At the first presidential debate last September, Clinton brought up his wild claims about climate change.

This is how the exchange went down:

CLINTON: Some country is going to be the clean- energy superpower of the 21st century. Donald thinks that climate change is a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese. I think it's real.

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TRUMP: I did not. I did not. I do not say that.

CLINTON: I think science is real.

TRUMP: I do not say that.

Trump has since backed away from what he said, calling his words a "joke" and has even denied saying these things altogether. However, over the years Trump hasn't shied away from his skepticism about climate change, and he has referred to it as a hoax many times. A lot of these claims are on his Twitter feed.

This tweet is from January 2014.

—Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 25, 2014

"NBC News just called it the great freeze — coldest weather in years. Is our country still spending money on the GLOBAL WARMING HOAX?"

A few days later.

—Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 29, 2014

"Snowing in Texas and Louisiana, record setting freezing temperatures throughout the country and beyond. Global warming is an expensive hoax!"

—Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 29, 2014

"Give me clean, beautiful and healthy air — not the same old climate change (global warming) bullshit! I am tired of hearing this nonsense."

Last January he told Fox & Friends that climate change was merely a very expensive form of tax.

"A lot of people are making a lot of money. I know much about climate change. I'd be — received environmental awards.And I often joke that this is done for the benefit of China," he said. "Obviously, I joke. But this is done for the benefit of China, because China does not do anything to help climate change. They burn everything you could burn; they couldn't care less. They have very — you know, their standards are nothing. But they — in the meantime, they can undercut us on price. So it's very hard on our business."

In a speech on energy policy in North Dakota last May, Trump referred to "draconian climate rules" and attacked "all the job-destroying Obama executive actions, including the Climate Action Plan."

"President Obama entered the United States into the Paris Climate Accords unilaterally and without the permission of Congress," he said. "This agreement gives foreign bureaucrats control over how much energy we use right here in America."

The fact that the new president of the US has repeatedly disagreed with the science is concerning, not just for the future of climate science, but for everyone that lives on earth. The USA is the second largest emitter of carbon dioxide, so if Trump makes decisions to make the situation even worse, we could all suffer.

icn 1020

Having Rolled Back Obama’s Centerpiece Climate Plan, Trump Defends a Vastly More Limited Approach

:{BY: MARIANNE LAVELLE

Obama’s initiative would have reduced power sector emissions by a third. Under Trump’s plan, they’d fall by less than 1 percent. Read More}:

==

2 americas?

The states that do the most to discourage climate action and encourage dirty energy are the states whose residents are suffering the most from climate impacts,a Mother Jones and Center for Public Integrity investigation has found.

A CPI analysis found that nine of the 10 states that did the most to block the Clean Power Plan also emit the most carbon dioxide per person,while four of those nine were among the states that saw the most natural disasters over the past 10 years. The investigation focuses on Kentucky, where flash floods, that in some cases were worsened by improper mine cleanup, have devastated local communities.

As reported by Mother Jones:

The choices that state leaders make now will have life-changing consequences for generations, experts warn. Michael Hendryx, a public health professor at Indiana University Bloomington who studies environmental justice, said he wonders whether officials promoting inaction truly think global warming is not an emergency or are simply making a cynical bet that they won't be harmed.

"They'll be the people who have the money and power to defend themselves as climate change gets worse," he said. "If we don't do something really powerful and really meaningful soon, then the people who live in vulnerable areas … will suffer the most."

For a deeper dive:

Mother Jones

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june 20 2x?

https://www.desmogblog.com/2019/06/20/trump-wheeler-epa-signs-coal-clean-power-plan-replacement

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dereg nation

better: the Trump administration’s expensive, dirty power plan is on its way to court

==

Trump admin's carbon rule faces legal war

Pamela King and Jennifer Hijazi, E&E News reporters

Published: Thursday, June 20, 2019

The Trump administration has lauded its Clean Power Plan replacement rule as a more legally defensible option for regulating greenhouse gas emissions from power plants.

==

CARBON RULE

Cost of ACE could eclipse benefits by $980M

Jean Chemnick and Niina H. Farah, E&E News reporters

Published: Thursday, June 20, 2019

EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler sold his agency's power plant carbon rule yesterday as having all the benefits of its Obama-era predecessor with none of the costs.

==

[pix

no lnx

Deputy Energy Secretary Dan Brouillette, acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney and White House Council on Environmental Quality Chairman Mary Neumayr watch as EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler signs the Affordable Clean Energy rule at EPA headquarters this morning. Francis Chung/E&E News]

The Trump administration is celebrating its replacement for the Clean Power Plan today as EPA offers a narrow path for power plants to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

Coal miners, members of Congress and leaders of conservative think tanks joined EPA officials at agency headquarters this morning for the rollout of the long-awaited Affordable Clean Energy rule.

The climate rule does not cap greenhouse gas emissions from power plants, leaving it up to states to pick from a menu of technologies to improve power plant efficiency at the facility level.

EPA estimates that once the final rule is fully implemented, it will lead to a 10 million-ton reduction in CO2 emissions and will provide net benefits of $70 million to $100 million — or possibly higher — each year.

Administrator Andrew Wheeler touted the rule — which also finalizes the repeal of the Obama administration's landmark Clean Power Plan — as a more legally defensible alternative.

"Unlike the CPP, the ACE rule adheres to the four corners of the Clean Air Act," he said.

The release of the final rule comes as the Trump administration has sought to offer support to the coal industry, and after years of lobbying by industry groups and conservatives to pare back the scope of the Obama administration's rulemaking.

The new climate rule limits "the best system of emissions reductions" to what can be achieved at the facility level and takes several possible approaches to slashing emissions off the table as means of compliance.

The proposal no longer includes changes to the New Source Review program. The agency had said the permitting program needed reform to prevent added costs to power plant operators complying with ACE.

The agency now plans to pursue power plant-specific changes to NSR separately.

"We're not finalizing that today, we fully intend to finalize the NSR fix, but frankly with everything we have in the final rule, we've bitten off as much as we can chew," the official said, adding that EPA plans to release changes to NSR in the next few months.

The rule's narrow focus excludes a number of options for compliance.

Under the final rule, states cannot use carbon capture and storage technology or fuel switching from coal to a less high-emitting option to comply.

The senior official told reporters in a background briefing ahead of the rule's release that CCS was not considered a "best system of emissions reduction" because it was not technologically feasible or cost-effective. The agency rejected the use of fuel switching as an option because it would exceed the agency's authority under the Clean Air Act to require plants to take that type of action.

Similarly, emissions trading, either between facilities or within facilities themselves, will also not be allowed.

The official clarified that states can still enact their own laws requiring these approaches, and facilities can adopt them voluntarily.

Agency officials noted that EPA's own analysis found that most states are already on track to meet the emissions reductions targets laid out in the Clean Power Plan, meaning there was very little difference between a scenario with the Obama-era rule and one without it.

"The market has taken care of it. The Clean Power Plan would have ended up causing specific closures at specific plants, regardless of what the marketplace would have done," Wheeler said.

The rule is also making changes to the framework regulations governing how EPA administers the part of the Clean Air Act the rule is written under, Section 111. The senior administration official said the agency would revise the regulations to more clearly state that the agency's role under the Clean Air Act section is to identify the best technology for pollution controls. It is up to states to develop standards that EPA would then review and approve.

The administration official in the briefing said the Clean Power Plan revealed a "fundamental problem" with framework regulations.

"The Obama administration went beyond a program of applying the best technology; the Obama administration imposed emissions obligations on each state," the official said.

These changes include extending the deadlines for states to provide plans for implementing the rule. States now have three years to submit plans to the agency, and EPA has a year to review them.

Given the length of time before states submit plans, EPA does not expect cutting NSR reforms from the rule to have an effect on states' plans, saying a fix should be out in the coming months.

The EPA administrator said the agency is expecting lawsuits over the new rule.

"I think everything we do, we're going to be sued," he said. "I do expect some litigation, but I also expect us to prevail in the courts. We pay very close attention to past court precedent. We're following the Clean Air Act."

Initial reactions

Andrew Wheeler unveiled the final Affordable Clean Energy rule. Photo credit: Francis Chung/E&E News

Coal miners, members of Congress and Trump administration officials attended an event this morning at EPA headquarters where Administrator Andrew Wheeler unveiled the final Affordable Clean Energy rule. Francis Chung/E&E News

Top administration officials lauded the ACE rule.

Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney called the rule a top priority for President Trump, noting how the president had talked about the rule on the campaign trail.

"This is another example of the president doing exactly what he said he would do when he ran for office," said Mulvaney.

"This rule regulates carbon emissions at our nation's power plants in a way that's consistent with the structure and the intent of the Clean Air Act. In other words, we're following the law as we continue to improve the quality of our air," said Deputy Energy Secretary Dan Brouillette.

The ACE rule is already causing Democratic heartburn on Capitol Hill, where Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and members of the Environment and Public Works Committee will make their case at a news conference this afternoon.

When the Trump administration rolled out the draft plan last year, Democrats used a similar event to float the idea of using the Congressional Review Act to undo the final rule, and many have again pledged to do anything in their power to halt it.

The CRA allows Congress 60 legislative days to overturn federal regulations, though neither the House nor the Senate would have enough votes to override a veto from Trump, meaning it would be a largely symbolic effort.

Democrats said yesterday that's still on the table as a messaging move, but several acknowledged the more realistic path to overturning the rule would be through the courts.

"It's definitely going to get challenged in court, and I would expect it to be on really shaky ground," Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.) told reporters yesterday. "From what I saw, their attempts to justify this were tortured and, I am sure, legally vulnerable."

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) added that a symbolic CRA challenge might be a lackluster response compared with attempting to legislate on climate change or use the appropriations process to block the rule.

"Whether there's value in it I think is kind of a political determination," she told reporters yesterday. "I think that passing a resolution on something so technical in scope may not have the messaging impact that people tend to reserve for resolutions, but I think it's important that we have a response and action."

Instead, Democrats are stressing the climate-related provisions in the House appropriations bills, which they say will help force the administration's hand to do something more aggressive about climate change.

"The appropriations package is very extensive. That is where we have leverage," Select Committee on the Climate Crisis Chairwoman Kathy Castor (D-Fla.) said this morning. "We will continue pressing for bold action moving forward."

On the other side, Republicans offered their praise for the ACE rule, but Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) said he's worrying about the potential legal vulnerabilities, with environmental groups likely to mount lawsuits.

At the same time, Cramer said he wasn't especially interested in revamping EPA's endangerment finding, the 2009 ruling that greenhouse gases are a threat to public health, which underpins both ACE and the original Clean Power Plan.

"Clearly, people want us to deal with greenhouse gas emissions, or at least deal with climate change in meaningful ways," Cramer told E&E News this morning. "We have to do that within the confines of the Constitution and the law, but I'm not as hung up on the endangerment finding being challenged as I am getting this right."

Still, Cramer and other Republicans praised the return to "federalism." Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) used a floor speech this morning to rail against the Clean Power Plan and hail a return to the "rule of law" with the Trump administration's greenhouse gas regulation.

"Just one more win for all Americans who live and work in communities where affordable, homegrown American energy sources like coal still matter a great deal," he said.

GOP industry allies also spent the morning offering their support for the ACE rule. They include the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which has shifted its rhetoric in recent months to acknowledge and call for action on climate change.

"Inaction on climate change is not an option, and policies to address it must be practical, flexible, predictable and durable," Christopher Guith, acting president of the Chamber's Global Energy Institute, said in a statement. "If consistent with these criteria, the ACE rule represents an important step by the Administration, working with states, and the private sector to lower greenhouse gas emissions."

Meanwhile, environmental groups are already threatening to sue, while some of their allies on Capitol Hill are starting to make a case that the ACE rule isn't better than nothing.

Huffman called it "a big old backward step," while Rhea Suh, president of the Natural Resources Defense Council, said it would "give polluters free rein and doom future generations."

"That's an approach America can ill afford — and we'll go to court to stop it," Suh said in a statement.

==

https://www.vox.com/2019/6/19/18684054/climate-change-clean-power-plan-repeal-affordable-emissions

The Environmental Protection Agency on Wednesday killed President Obama’s signature climate change policy, the Clean Power Plan (CPP). It’s one of the few definitive wins in the Trump administration’s full-court press to undo and weaken environmental regulations.

Speaking before an audience that included coal miners wearing reflective shirts and hard hats, EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler criticized the Obama policy, which required states to meet targets for cutting greenhouse gas emissions from power plants and aimed to reduce US power sector emissions 32 percent below 2005 levels by 2030.

“The CPP would have asked low- and middle-income Americans to bear the costs of the previous administration’s climate plan,” Wheeler said. “One analysis predicted double-digit electricity price increases in 40 states under the CPP.”

The EPA is still required to regulate greenhouse gases, but the CPP’s new replacement, the Affordable Clean Energy (ACE) rule, is drastically weaker. The ACE rule would lower power sector emissions by 11 million tons by 2030, or between 0.7 percent and 1.5 percent. The EPA noted that long-term industry trends are expected to still push emissions down 35 percent, but that’s largely independent of the ACE rule.

Speaking at the announcement, White House acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney said Wednesday that US emissions are “flat or down.” That is wrong. In fact, US greenhouse gas emissions are on the rise after years of decline.

So the new ACE rule is likely to do little to slow the US power sector’s impact on the global climate. According to some researchers, the new policy itself could actually increase greenhouse gas emissions, even compared to business as usual. And according to the EPA’s own assessments last year, the proposal will lead to thousands more deaths from air pollution.

However, environmental groups are gearing up to file legal challenges to the ACE rule. And despite its intentions, the new regulation would do little to slow the decline of the US coal industry.

The EPA is required to regulate greenhouse gases, but the law doesn’t say it has to be enthusiastic about it

As much as the Trump administration doesn’t want to do it, the EPA must regulate greenhouse gases. In 2007, the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 in *Massachusetts v. EPA* that the agency has to limit greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act if they’re a threat to public health. The EPA’s 2009 endangerment finding for carbon dioxide determined just that.

So the Trump administration couldn’t just repeal the CPP; it needed a plausible replacement to fight climate change. The ACE rule is an attempt at that.

“I believe this is the first rule in EPA’s history that acknowledges the existential threat of climate change but by the agency’s own admission does absolutely nothing to stop it,” said former ObamaEPA Administrator Gina McCarthy in a statement.

The critical detail here is how the ACE rule intends to lower emissions compared to the CPP. The EPA is required to lay out a standard known as “best system of emission reduction.” Under the Obama administration, this included pricing carbon dioxide, switching to cleaner power generation fuels, or capturing carbon dioxide emissions.

The new ACE rule leans on one method: efficiency. The technical term is “heat rate improvement,” and it means is that fossil fuel-burning power plants would be pushed to draw more energy from the same amount of fuel. This would lower the carbon intensity of the energy generated.

However, generating more energy from the same amount of fuel makes the fuel more cost-effective. That in turn could lead to a rebound effect where utilities end up burning more fuels like coal and natural gas. According to a study published in April in Environmental Research Letters, the ACE rule would lead to 28 percent of the power plants modeled in the study to emit more carbon dioxide by 2030 compared to a scenario with no policy at all.

This rebound effect can also lead to an increase of other air pollutants like particulates, nitrogen oxides, and sulfur oxides. In the EPA’s own regulatory impact assessment for the ACE rule published last year, the agency noted that these extra pollutants could cause between 460 and 1,400 additional deaths per year by 2030, in addition to exacerbating other ailments like asthma.

The ACE rule is part of a concerted, and largely futile, strategy across the Trump administration to boost coal

President Trump has made no secret of his love of fossil fuels in general and coal in particular. His Administration has gone to extreme lengths to boost the sector, from opening up unprecedented amounts of public land to mining to trying to use emergency powers to bail out money-losing coal plants.

The EPA is also working to relax Mercury and Air Toxics Standards that limit hazardous pollution from existing coal-fired power plants. For new coal-fired generators, the EPA is working to relax New Source Performance Standards that govern how much carbon dioxide new power plants are allowed to emit.

The EPA is justifying these changes by arguing that the costs of implementing new environmental controls like scrubbers for flue gases is too high. The agency is also changing how it calculates the benefits of limiting emissions, proposing a shift to a model that yields far fewer saved lives and health benefits.

Scientists on EPA advisory boards who received research grants from the agency have also been forced out of their positions. EPA officials said this was a move to prevent conflicts of interest, but the agency has allowed scientists from industries regulated by the EPA as well as researchers from states that have sued the EPA to continue advising it.

Trump’s EPA has also taken steps to restrict the scientific research it uses to form regulations, arguing that all research that informs rulemaking should be reproducible and make underlying data public. Health advocates say that this would exclude important research on one-off events like chemical leaks, and patient privacy concerns prevent some researchers from releasing their underlying work.

The net result of these changes is a suite of policies that make it easier to keep existing coal power plants online and clear the path for any new plants.

But it’s not regulations that are driving out the coal industry in the United States; it’s competition, especially from natural gas.

[tweet]

So it’s unlikely that these new rules would move the needle for the coal industry, and more coal-fired power plants are slated to be closed this year.

The Affordable Clean Energy rule obviates one legal headache for the EPA, but is creating another one

Trump’s EPA has argued that the Obama plan exceeded the agency’s authority and that the new proposal fits within the confines of the law. When the CPP was announced, 27 states sued to block it. Then, in an unusual move, the Supreme Court in 2016 ruled 5-4 to stay the Clean Power Plan to allow state lawsuits to proceed, preventing it from ever going into effect.

With the Affordable Clean Energy rule finalized, those lawsuits are now moot.

The latest repeal is at the intersection of two Trump Administration priorities outlined in executive orders: to roll back regulations and to promote US energy development, particularly fossil fuels. And unlike other environmental rollbacks at the EPA that have been delayed, bogged down in bureaucratic muck, or stalled by lawsuits, the ACE rule, now that it has been finalized, might stick.

But New York Attorney General Letitia James has already announced her intent to sue the Trump administration over the ACE rule and expects other states to join the litigation. Other state attorneys general have also come out to oppose the Trump administration’s new power plant rule. That means another wave of court cases could stall the EPA’s new rule.

When Trump's Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced its replacement for the Obama-era Clean Power Plan in August 2018, its own estimates said the reduced regulations could lead to 1,400 early deaths a year from air pollution by 2030.

Now, the EPA wants to change the way it calculates the risks posed by particulate matter pollution, using a model that would lower the death toll from the new plan, The New York Times reported Monday. Five current or former EPA officials familiar with the plan told The Times that the new method would assume there is no significant health gain by lowering air pollution levels below the legal limit. However, many public health experts say that there is no safe level of particulate matter exposure, which has long been linked to heart and lung disease.

"Using fake math to hide the death toll from dirty air at the behest of the coal industry is sadly consistent with the Trump administration's complete disregard for public health," Environmental Working Group(EWG) Senior Science Advisor for Children's Environmental Health Dr. Olga Naidenko said in responseto the plan. "This sleight of hand means that more adults may die early and more children may become victims of asthma."

New York University environmental law expert Richard L. Revesz called the proposed change a "monumental departure" from how the agency has calculated air pollution risk under past administrations from both parties.

"Particulate matter is extremely harmful and it leads to a large number of premature deaths," Revesz said.

The new method will be used in the EPA's final version of the Clean Power Plan replacement, the Affordable Clean Energy Rule, due to be released in June. The new rule would improve the efficiency of coal plants slightly while also allowing older plants to remain in operation longer, leading both to more climate-change causing emissions and more particulate matter pollution.

When asked if the new method would appear in the final plan, former chemical and fossil fuel lobbyist and current EPA Assistant Administrator for the Office of Air and Radiation William L. Wehrumsaid the final draft would include multiple approaches and that the agency had not officially changed its methodology.

However, Wehrum also called the focus on the 1,400 number "unfortunate" and said the agency was considering a number of alternative calculations that would lead to lower death tolls. He said the lower figure would be included to show that different assumptions could lead to different results, but said that any new method would be peer-reviewed before being used as the EPA's leading means of assessing air pollution risk.

EPA spokesman James Hewitt echoed that message in a statement to CNN.

"No change to this scientific method will be made unless and until the new approach has been peer reviewed," he said.

The EPA is considering the new method as part of its regular review of air quality standards, which it aims to complete by 2020, CNN reported.

In recent years, studies have shown a growing number of health risks associated with particulate matter exposure, including dementia. Colorado School of Public Health Dean Dr. Jonathan M. Samet told The New York Times that most new studies showed risks at levels of exposure below the EPA's legal limit of 12 micrograms per cubic meter on average per year.

"It's not a hard stop where we can say 'below that, air is safe.' That would not be supported by the scientific evidence," Samet said. "It would be very nice for public health if things worked that way, but they don't seem to."

Revesz worried the new method would be used to roll back other environmental regulations as well.

"It could be an enormously significant impact," he told The New York Times.

RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB

From Your Site Articles

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Trump's 'Dirty Power Plan' Could Cost More Than 1,000 Lives a Year

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) unveiled on Tuesday its long-anticipated replacement of the Obama-era Clean Power Plan. The new coal pollution rules will increase planet-warming carbon pollution and could cost more than a thousand American lives each year, according to the EPA's own estimates.

EPA Acting Administrator Andrew Wheeler released the "Affordable Clean Energy Rule" today under President Trump's directive. The new plan encourages efficiency improvements at existing coal plants to ensure they operate longer and allows states to weaken, or even eliminate, coal emissions standards. That's a clear difference from former President Obama's plan, which was aimed at phasing out coal and transitioning to cleaner power sources to avoid dangerous climate change.

...

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https://www.ecowatch.com/trump-power-plant-plan-co2-2597454144.html

Trump Power Plant Plan Will Significantly Increase CO2 Pollution

The Trump administration is expected on Tuesday to propose a major rollback of the Clean Power Plan, President Obama's signature climate policy.

The replacement will relax rules for coal-fired plants and will very likely increase air pollution and planet-warming carbon dioxide emissions.

The new plan, as the Washington Post reported, would allow states to set their own coal emission standards or even opt-out altogether, and provides companies incentives to ensure coal plants operate longer. It's a clear contrast to the Obama plan, which was aimed at phasing out coal and transitioning to cleaner power sources to avoid dangerous climate change.

The Trump rule "is projected to release at least 12 times the amount of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere compared with the Obama rule over the next decade," the Post reported. To illustrate how different the plans are, by 2030, the Trump proposal would cut carbon dioxide emissions from 2005 levels by 0.7 to 1.5 percent, or the equivalent of taking 2.7 million to 5.3 million cars off the road. In contrast, Obama's initiative had a goal of slashing CO2 emissions around 19 percent in the same time frame, or the equivalent of taking 75 million cars off the road.

"These numbers tell the story, that they really remain committed not to do anything to address greenhouse gas emissions. They show not merely indifference to climate change, but really, opposition to doing anything about climate change," Jose Goffman, executive director of Harvard Law School's Environmental Law Program and an architect of the Obama-era policy, told the Post.

The New York Times reported Sunday that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) air office head, William L. Wehrum, was key in developing the power plant plan that would surely please his corporate clients. The former industry lawyer represented a host of coal, oil, gas and chemical companies, and was a George W. Bush-era EPA official.

"They basically found the most aggressive and knowledgeable fox and said, 'Here are the keys to the hen house,'" said Bruce Buckheit, an air pollution expert and the former EPA head of air pollution enforcement for Republican and Democratic administrations, to the Times.

Meanwhile, Michelle Bloodworth, president of the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity,which advocates on behalf of major U.S. coal producers, said the new rules would "provide the flexibility to states to develop emissions guidelines that recognize the important role that our nation's coal fleet plays," she told Financial Times.

The new measure, which President Trump will reportedly announce Tuesday during a visit to West Virginia, will be subject to a 60-day comment period.

At a New York fundraiser last week, Trump said that coal was an "indestructible" form of energy and once againcriticized windmills, according to Newsweek. Saving the flagging coal industry and ending the so-called "war on coal" was a core component of his presidential campaign.

"Coal is indestructible. You can blow up a pipeline, you can blow up the windmills," Trump was heard saying in Utica.

...doc]

https://www.desmogblog.com/2018/08/17/sizing-trump-coal-dirty-replacement-clean-power-plan

Thirteen months ago, we made some guesses about what a replacement for the Clean Power Plan might look like. We speculated the new rule would be the sort of “inside the fenceline” policy preferred by the industry–one where coal plants are only required to make marginal improvements, basically just upgrading existing plants to run more efficiently.

Such an approach, which makes coal plants more profitable to run and would keep them running for longer, would ultimately lead to even higher levels of pollution than if there was no policy at all.

A couple weeks later we looked at the shady math used to justify repealing the CPP, and how that played into Bob Murray’s plans (the coal baron for whom Andrew Wheeler lobbied.)

And back in March, we pointed to legal experts who explained how the EPA will need to do better than the inside-the-fenceline approach if it wants to survive a legal challenge.

This is all just to say that if you’ve been paying close attention here, you won’t be at all surprised byEmily Holden’s scoop in Politico based on the soon-to-be-published draft CPP replacement plan that itself admits it will lead to more pollution. As we expected, the administration plans on pursuing the fenceline approach that allows for only barely cleaner coal plants to continue polluting for years to come.

Also as we expected, they’re not going to consider the international impacts of reducing emissions and plan to cook the books by changing the discount rate so as to downplay the CPP’s benefits for future Americans and ignore the dangers of dirty air by removing the co-benefits of reducing PM2.5 pollution.

NRDC’s David Doniger put up a great post Monday explaining how this replacement is actually a Dirty Power Plan. One interesting twist Doinger highlights is that the expected policy will not only allow states to set pollution limits, breaking with the existing precedent, but will also allow them to simply opt out of setting standards all together.

Doniger notes that in the advance notice of proposed rulemaking published issued late last year, states will be able to exempt coal plants from further regulation for their “remaining useful life.”

It’s interesting that this administration seems okay with throwing states’ rights out when it comes to California’s clean car standards, but gives deference to states when it comes to the Dirty Power Plan. That may sound like a contradiction, but it’s actually indicative of the only discernible element of consistency in the Trump administration.

Despite record high staff turnover under a President who changes his mind more often than his flunkies have to change their cover stories, the administration remains remarkably consistent on one thing: putting polluter profits before public health.

https://www.ecowatch.com/climate-action-polls-us-2547873879.html

Majority of Americans Wants Climate Action, Survey Finds

Whether or not the Trump administration knows or cares, a majority of Americans wants government action on climate change.

For the past ten years, the University of Michigan and Muhlenberg College have asked Americans their opinions on energy and climate policies in biannual National Surveys on Energy and Environment (NSEE).

A March report on the past decade of surveys reveals that, in fall 2017, more Americans who believe in climate change answered that urgent government action is required to combat it than at any other point in the survey's history.

"For the past decade or so, and even last year, about 70 percent of Americans [who believe climate change is happening] say that the government needs to act urgently to address climate change," Sarah B. Mills, one of the report's authors and the senior project manager with the Center for Local, State and Urban Policy at the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan, told Michigan Radioon Tuesday. "On the latest survey, in the fall, it was 76 percent. So that's where we've seen the biggest jump in recent times," she said.

Mills speculated that the jump in urgency might have been a response to Trump's decision to withdraw from the Paris agreement.

In the same Fall 2017 survey, 52 percent of all Americans said the federal government "has a great deal of responsibility … for taking actions to reduce global warming." Fewer numbers of Americans thought state and local governments had the same level of responsibility to act, with 41 percent assigning high responsibility to states and 34 percent to cities and counties.

Opinions did vary by party affiliation, with69 percent of Democrats and only 30 percent of Republicanssaying the federal government had a large role to play.

However, the report found that on individual climate issues Republicans were more receptive to government action than the rhetoric of their party often suggests.

When the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was working on developing a policy for reducing industrial emissions in spring 2013, 51 percent of Republicans said they would want their state to work with the EPA to achieve that goal. In fall 2014, after the EPA had proposed the Clean Power Plan (CPP) to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from electrical power plants, 60 percent of Republicans said they approved of the measure. The EPA under Scott Pruitt has since initiated the process of repealing the CPP.

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https://insideclimatenews.org/news/21022018/clean-power-plan-repeal-cities-climate-change-epa-emissions-rules

Hundreds of U.S. mayors, representing one in seven Americans, have told EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt that they need the Clean Power Plan's emissions rules in order to fight climate change and protect their cities.

In a letter released on Tuesday, 236 mayors from 47 states urged Pruitt not to repeal the plan, which was a centerpiece of President Obama's effort to tackle climate change by cracking down on emissions from electric power plants. The rule has been in limbo during litigation, and President Trump wants it revoked, as Pruitt has proposed to do.

"We strongly oppose the repeal of the Clean Power Plan, which would put our citizens at risk and undermine our efforts to prepare for and protect against the worst impacts of climate change," the mayors wrote.

The group included the mayors of cities like Orlando, Houston and New Orleans that have suffered the ravages of storms and floods linked to a warming climate. It also included the mayor of Kansas City, Missouri, who was hosting Pruitt's latest hearing on the rules Wednesday.

On Twitter, Kansas City Mayor Sly James said the Clean Power Plan "benefits communities across the country."

The rules, which were imposed in 2015, aimed to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from power plants by 32 percent by 2030. Pruitt, who had fought the proposal in court for years, began working to overturn it shortly after being confirmed as EPA administrator. The EPA is collecting public comment until April 26 about how and whether to replace the regulations.

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The Failure: Abandoning the Social Cost of Carbon

The social cost of carbon, or SCC, is a calculation that estimates the long-term economic impact of carbon dioxide emissions. It's a highly significant number—lawmakers use the SCC to figure out whether rules that tackle pollution are worth the investment. In 2009, the Obama administration established a group called the Interagency Working Group on the Social Cost of Greenhouse Gases that eventually set the cost of one ton of CO2 emissions at $41, which is why the former president estimated the Clean Power Plan would ultimately yield up to $54 billion a year in health and environmental benefits.

Just a couple of months after taking Obama's spot in the White House, Trump disbanded the Interagency Working Group with his Promoting Energy Independence and Economic Growth Executive Order. He said its findings were "no longer representative of governmental policy." Trump decided the SCC should be calculated differently, with each government agency determining its own dollar figure. This could mean interagency inconsistencies as well as an increased emphasis on the domestic, rather than global, impact of CO2—pivots that would make the emissions seem far less costly than they actually are. The Trump U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) proposal to repeal the Clean Power Plan, for example, calculated that the SCC would be just $1 to $6 by 2020.

But some courts find fault with this plan. In cases across the country, judges are ruling that the SCC is necessary, and fossil fuel projects like coal mines and pipelines are now tied up as a direct result of the administration's failure to consider the climate costs.

Meanwhile, numerous states, including Colorado, Illinois, Minnesota and New York, are ignoring Trump's moves and still using an SCC above $40 to guide policy decisions.

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11/17

https://www.ecowatch.com/clean-power-plan-senators-pruitt-2502303003.html

Senators Accuse EPA of 'Denying Science' and 'Fabricating Math' to Justify Clean Power Plan Repeal

In a letter sent to U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Scott Pruitt on Thursday, 19 Democratic senators demanded that the EPA boss "show your work" in his justification of repealing the Clean Power Plan (CPP).

This move comes after suggestions that the agency seriously underestimated the costly toll of climate change. For instance, one analysis showed that the Trump EPA put the cost of one ton of emissions of carbon dioxide between $1 and $6 in the year 2020—a dramatic decrease of the Obama administration's 2020 estimate of $45. This figure is known as the "social cost of carbon"—or the public cost of burning fossil fuels—which guides current energy regulations and possible future mitigation policies.

“Our review of the 2017 Repeal proposal reveals significant deficiencies associated with the cost-benefit analysis used to support the 2015 Rule's repeal," the senators wrote. "At seemingly every turn, the 2017 Repeal proposal uses mathematical sleights of hand to over-state the costs of industry compliance with the 2015 Rule and under-state the benefits that will be lost if the 2017 Repeal is finalized."

The effort was led by Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.), top Democrat on the Environment and Public Works Committee. Other prominent signatories include Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), Cory Booker (D-N.J.), Al Franken (D-Minn.), Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.).

They continued:

"Denying the science and fabricating the math may satisfy the agency's paperwork requirements, but doing so will not satisfy the requirements of the law, nor will it slow the increase in frequency and intensity of extreme weather events, the inexorable rise in sea levels, or the other dire effects of global warming that our planet is already experiencing. It will also not improve our standing in the international community or bring certainty to power markets as states plan for their future energy needs."

“Your rejection of the scientific consensus that greenhouse gas pollution causes global warming is well-known. Additionally, we continue to await your response to the April 7, 2017 letter requesting more details about your views related to the cause of global warming and the agency's plan to repeal and replace the 2015 Clean Power Plan Rule. Our review of the 2017 Repeal proposal only heightens our concerns."

Pruitt announced earlier this month that he was repealing the CPP, which cuts carbon dioxide emissions from the nation's power plants. Without the rule, the U.S. will not live up to its Paris climate accord pledge of a 26 to 28 percent reduction in emissions by 2025.

Pruitt says withdrawing the rule would end the war on coal.

...

https://www.ecowatch.com/epa-clean-power-plan-2492833765.html

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https://www.ecowatch.com/pruitt-guts-clean-power-plan-2491015206.html

Pruitt Guts the Clean Power Plan: How Weak Will the New EPA Proposal Be?

By Rachel Cleetus

News articles indicate that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is soon going to release a "revised" Clean Power Plan (CPP). It is very likely to be significantly weaker than the original CPP, which offered one of the country's best hopes for reducing carbon emissions that cause global warming.

EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt and President Trump have made no secret about their intent to stop and reverse progress on addressing climate change, so there's every reason to expect that the revised CPP will be fatally flawed and compromised.

Here's how we'll be evaluating it.

How We Got Here

In August 2015, the EPA issued final standards to limit carbon emissions from new and existing power plants, a historic first-ever step to limit these emissions. Those standards, developed under the Clean Air Act, came about as a result of a landmark 2007 Supreme Court ruling and subsequent Endangerment finding from the EPA.

The final CPP for existing power plants was projected to drive emissions down 32 percent below 2005 levels by 2030, while providing an estimated $26 billion to $45 billion in net benefits in 2030.

In March 2017, President Trump issued an executive order blocking the Clean Power Plan. He claimed to do so to promote "energy independence and economic growth," (despite the fact that the U.S. transition to cleaner energy continues to bring significant health and economic benefits nationwide). The EPA then embarked on a process of implementing the EO, including initiating a review of the CPP.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit has granted two stays in court challenges related to the CPP, the most recent of which was issued on Aug. 8 for a 60-day period. These stays were specifically to give the EPA time to review the rule; this in no way changes the agency's "affirmative statutory obligation to regulate greenhouse gases."

The EPA is currently expected to issue a revised CPP by Oct. 7, aiming to head off litigation on this issue. Of course, if the plan they issue is a weak one, as it is likely to be the case, there is no question that court challenges will continue.

EPA's most recent status update filed with the DC Circuit confirms that the agency has sent a draft rule to the Office of Management and Budget, and Administrator Pruitt expects to sign the proposed rule in fall 2017. This will begin a comment period on the new draft rule before it can be finalized.

Five Metrics for Assessing the Revised Clean Power Plan Proposal

While we don't yet know exactly how the proposed rule will look, there are some key things we'll be watching for:

1. Will the revised plan cut power sector carbon emissions at least as much as the original CPP?

Not likely. Reports indicate that reductions might be limited to what can be achieved through measures at individual power plants, such as efficiency improvements. (Power plant efficiency improvements, known as 'heat rate improvements,' reduce the energy content of the fossil fuel consumed per unit of electricity generated at power plants).

The associated carbon reductions are going to be relatively small compared to what could be achieved through a power sector-wide approach—including bringing on line cleaner generation resources, increasing demand-side energy efficiency and allowing market-based trading—as was adopted in the original Clean Power Plan. For the final CPP, the EPA estimated that on average nationally a fleet-wide heat rate improvement of approximately 4 percent was feasible, which would result in a fleet-wide CO2 reduction of about 62 million tons in a year. (For context, U.S. power sector CO2 emissions in 2016 were 1,821 million metric tons).

2. Will it promote renewable energy while heading off an over reliance on natural gas?

An approach that's limited to carbon reductions at current fossil-fired power plants will miss one of the biggest opportunities to lower power sector emissions: ramp up cheap renewable energy!

The original CPP explicitly called out a role for renewable energy in helping to cost-effectively bring down carbon emissions. UCS analysis shows how boosting renewable energy can help cut emissions affordably while bringing consumer and health benefits. Simply switching from coal to gas, while it does lower carbon emissions at the power plant, is just not going to be enough to achieve the deep cuts in power sector emissions we ultimately need from a climate perspective. Boosting the contribution from renewable energy can help limit the climate, economic and health risks of an overreliance on natural gas.

3. Will it lowball the harms posed by climate change?

Administrator Pruitt seems to understand that legally the EPA is required to regulate carbon emissions and he cannot simply do away with the CPP without replacing it. But will the new plan actually recognize the magnitude of the damages that climate change poses?

Earlier this year, President Trump also issued an executive order undercutting the use of the social cost of carbon (SCC), which measures the costs of climate change (and the benefits of cutting carbon emissions). The SCC served as a proxy for measuring the dollar benefits of carbon reductions from the original CPP. If the re-proposed CPP uses an artificially low SCC, that would fly in the face of the latest science and economics.

4. Will it actually help coal miners get their jobs back?

Not very likely, a fact that even coal company executive Robert Murray and Sen. Mitch McConnell have admitted. Market trends are continuing to drive a historic transition away from coal-fired power that is unlikely to change just by getting rid of the CPP.

If the Trump administration and Congress are serious about helping coal miners and coal mining communities, they should invest in real solutions—worker training, economic diversification and other types of targeted resources—to help these communities thrive in a clean energy economy, as my colleague Jeremy Richardson wrote.

5. Will it increase pollution?

If the revised proposal attempts to maintain or increase the amount of coal-fired power, that will lead to more air, water and toxic pollution.

In addition to being a major source of carbon emissions, coal-fired power plants are a leading source of emissions of nitrogen oxides, sulfur dioxide, particulate matter, and mercury, among other types of harmful pollution. These pollutants cause or exacerbate heart and lung diseases and can even lead to death. Mercury can affect the neurological development of babies in utero and young children. The Clean Power Plan would have delivered significant health benefits through reductions in these co-pollutants.

Clean Energy Momentum Will Continue

Despite Administrator Pruitt's attempts to undermine the CPP, clean energy momentum will continue nationwide. The facts on the ground are rapidly changing. Market trends continue to drive down coal-fired power because coal is an increasingly uncompetitive option compared to cleaner options like natural gas and renewable energy.

That's why Xcel CEO Benjamin Fawke recently said "I'm not going to build new coal plants in today's environment." And "We're investing big in wind because of the tremendous economic value it brings to our customers."

It's why Appalachian Power's Chris Beam also said,

At the end of the day, West Virginia may not require us to be clean, but our customers are (…) So if we want to bring in those jobs, and those are good jobs, those are good-paying jobs that support our universities because they hire our engineers, they have requirements now, and we have to be mindful of what our customers want. We're not going to build any more coal plants. That's not going to happen.

The pace of growth in renewable energy growth is particularly striking, with new wind and solar installations outstripping that of any other source of power including natural gas.

And as my colleague Julie McNamara recently pointed out, energy efficiency is one of the top electricity resources in the U.S., and in fact was the third-largest electricity resource in the U.S. in 2015.

That's why more and more states, cities and businesses are doubling down on their commitment to renewable energy and the goals of the Paris climate agreement, saying "We're Still In!"

For all of you who care deeply about our nation's transition to clean energy, please ask your state legislators to push for more renewable energy even as the Trump administration tries to turn back progress.

We Still Need Robust Federal Policies

Despite the promising market trends, there's no denying we need robust federal policies to accelerate the current clean energy momentum and cut U.S. carbon emissions faster and deeper to meet climate goals.

The reality is that the original CPP itself was not strong enough, though it was a pivotal step in the right direction. The U.S. will need to do more, both in the power sector and economy-wide to cut emissions in line with the goals of the Paris agreement.

A weakened CPP would be a sad step back in our efforts to address global warming. At a time when the risks of climate change are abundantly clear—just consider this years' terrible hurricane and wildfire seasons—this is no time to delay action.

Administrator Pruitt: Do Your Job

Mr. Pruitt continues to show a blatant disregard for the mission of the agency he heads, while pandering to fossil fuel and other industry interests. Weakening the power plant carbon standards is just the latest in a long string of actions he has taken to undermine public health safeguards that were developed in accordance with laws Congress has passed.

Furthermore, he has repeatedly attacked the role of science in informing public policy. Perhaps most egregiously, he continues to deny the facts on climate change. (If he is genuinely interested in understanding the latest science, he need look no further than the U.S. National Academy of Sciences).

Administrator Pruitt, stop hurting our children's health and future. Do your job—and start by setting strong carbon standards for power plants.

Rachel Cleetus is the lead economist and climate policy manager at the Union of Concerned Scientists.

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‘Clean Power’ Plays and the Last Stand for Federalism

By DAVID B. RIVKIN, JR. and ANDREW M. GROSSMAN

Sept. 25, 2016, in the Wall Street Journal

After Congress turned down President Obama ’s request to enact a law regulating power plants’ greenhouse-gas emissions, the Environmental Protection Agency turned to the states—not with a request, but with instructions to carry out the president’s energy policy. The EPA’s “Clean Power Plan” now faces the scrutiny of the nation’s chief regulatory review court, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

If the Constitution’s federalism is to endure, the Clean Power Plan must be struck down.

The Constitution establishes a federal government of limited and enumerated powers while the states retain a plenary “police power,” subject only to the specific limitations of federal law. This is what Justice :{Anthony Kennedy:(style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;vertical-align:baseline"):}: called the Constitution’s “genius”: It “split the atom of sovereignty” to ensure accountability when meeting both local and national concerns, while fostering rivalry between the two levels to curb excessive political ambition that might threaten liberty.

Only in recent decades did politicians learn how to realize their ambitions through collusion. The federal government now entices states with transfer payments to establish and administer social-welfare programs. And, in schemes that the courts describe as “cooperative federalism,” it offers states the choice to regulate their citizens according to federal dictates, as an alternative to the feds regulating directly and having states get out of the way.

Even these approaches were not enough for the Obama administration to cajole the states to carry out its energy agenda. So it resolved to obliterate one of the last vestiges of the Constitution’s vertical separation of powers: the bar on federal commandeering of the states and their officials to carry out federal policy.

The Clean Power Plan is enormously complicated, but its overall approach is straightforward. Previous emissions regulations have focused on reducing emissions from particular facilities, but this one relies on shifting electricity generation from disfavored facilities (coal-fired power plants) to those the EPA prefers (natural gas and renewables). The EPA then determined what, in its view, is the maximum amount of such shifting that each of the nation’s regional electric grids could possibly accommodate and calculated the emissions reductions.

Parcel those figures out by state, factor in additional reductions due to estimated efficiency improvements at older plants, and the result is state-specific reduction targets. The states can elect to achieve those targets themselves—or, if they decline, the EPA will do it for them. “Textbook cooperative federalism,” says the EPA.

Not quite. Whether or not the states choose to implement the plan directly, it leaves them no choice but to carry out the EPA’s federal climate policy. That’s because the EPA can destroy but not create. It can regulate emissions of existing facilities, but it lacks the legal authority to facilitate the construction and integration of new power sources, which is ultimately the only way to achieve the plan’s aggressive targets.

That duty falls to the states, which the plan depends upon to carry out what the EPA calls their “responsibility to maintain a reliable electric system.” Doing nothing, as in the cooperative federalism scenario, is not an option.

So this is how the plan works: The EPA pushes coal-fired plants off the grid, and then counts on the states to ensure that the resulting reductions in capacity are matched by increases in EPA-preferred forms of power generation. State agencies will have to be involved in decommissioning coal-fired plants, addressing replacement capacity—like wind turbines and solar arrays—addressing transmission and integration issues, and undertaking all manner of related regulatory proceedings. All this to carry out federal policy.

The Clean Power Plan implicates everyevil associated with unconstitutional commandeering. It dragoons states into administering federal law, irrespective of their citizens’ views. It destroys accountability, by directing the brunt of public disapproval for increased electricity costs and lost jobs onto state officials, when the federal government deserves the blame. And it subverts the horizontal separation of powers, by allowing the executive branch to act where Congress has refused to legislate.

One can only wonder what will be left of our constitutional order if the plan passes judicial muster.

The federal government would no longer be a government of limited powers, but instead be able to compel the states to do its bidding in any area. The states, in turn, would be reduced to puppets of a federal ventriloquist, carrying out the dirty work for which federal actors wish to avoid accountability. And the federal executive, in many instances, could effectively create new law by working through the states, free of the need to win over Congress.

So it is difficult to imagine a U.S. where the Clean Power Plan is the law of the land. It would not be the same country, or the same Constitution, that Americans have enjoyed all these years.

Messrs. Rivkin and Grossman practice appellate and constitutional law in Washington, D.C., and represent the State of Oklahoma and the Oklahoma Department of Environmental Quality in their challenge to the Clean Power Plan.

Source: http://www.wsj.com/articles/clean-power-plays-and-the-last-stand-for-federalism-1474841482

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Trump Can Ax the Clean Power Plan by Executive Order

By DAVID B. RIVKIN JR. and ANDREW M. GROSSMAN

Nov. 20, 2016, in the Wall Street Journal....

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The Right-Wing Media's Most Unhinged Reactions To The EPA's Historic Climate Plan

Research ››› August 4, 20155:43 PM EDT ››› DENISE ROBBINS & KEVIN KALHOEFER

Right-wing media have reacted to the unveiling of the final version of President Obama's historic Clean Power Plan with claims that it will hurt America, denials that it will benefit public health, and personal attacks on the president and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Gina McCarthy. Here's a sampling of the conservative media's most unhinged, over-the-top reactions.

President Obama Unveils Historic Clean Power Plan

President Obama Confronts Climate Change With First-Ever Carbon Pollution Standards For Power Plants. On August 3, President Obama formally unveiled the final version of the EPA's Clean Power Plan (CPP), which will place the first-ever limits on carbon pollution from power plants. NPR reported that Obama called the plan the "single most important step that America has ever made in the fight against global climate change." [National Public Radio, 8/3/15; WhiteHouse.gov, 8/3/15]

Lower Emissions Under Plan Would Reduce Asthma Attacks And Premature Deaths. A White House fact sheet noted that the CPP will bring significant public health benefits by reducing pollutants in the air, which will "avoid up to 3,600 premature deaths, lead to 90,000 fewer asthma attacks in children, and prevent 300,000 missed work and school days." The American Lung Association (ALA) similarly stated that the Clean Power Plan "will directly save lives ... by removing dangerous pollution from the air we breathe."  The ALA also noted that "[c]hildren, the elderly and people with lung diseases including asthma face some of the greatest risks, including from ozone and soot that climate change makes worse." [WhiteHouse.gov, 8/3/15; American Lung Association, 8/2/15 and 7/29/15]

Right-Wing Media Go Off The Rails

Limbaugh Mocked Link Between Humans And Climate Change By Telling Listeners: "You're Destroying The Planet ... You Are Worse Than Al Qaeda." On the August 3 edition of Premiere Radio Networks' The Rush Limbaugh Show, Limbaugh mocked the idea that Americans bear any responsibility for climate change, saying: "You're destroying the planet, folks. You are worse than Al-Qaeda. You are worse than Iran getting a nuclear weapon. You! That's what he means here." [RushLimbaugh.com, 8/3/15]

Hannity:Obama Said He Couldn't Breathe In LA Because Of Smog, But It Was Probably Because He Was "Getting Stoned All Day And Doing Lines Of Blow." On the August 3 edition of his radio show, Sean Hannity dismissed an anecdote Obama told during his speech unveiling the Clean Power Plan about how he had trouble jogging in Los Angeles in 1979 while he was in college because of the city's high smog level back then. Hannity dismissed pollution as the reason and said it "[m]aybe had something to do with that pot he was smoking as part of the Choom Gang ... and doing little lines of blow":

Now he talks about people can run through Los Angeles without choking. Maybe it had something to do with that pot he was smoking as part of the Choom Gang, or maybe the many cigarettes that he was smoking and getting stoned all day and doing little lines of blow and everything else that he admits that he did. [Premiere Radio Network, Hannity, 8/3/15; Los Angeles Times, 8/3/15]

Fox News Contributor Tammy Bruce: Obama "Needs Medication." In a tweet responding to Obama saying "the science tells us we have to do more" on climate change, Fox News contributor and Washington Times columnist Tammy Bruce wrote: "The science tells us @BarackObama needs medication."

Follow

Tammy Bruce ? @HeyTammyBruce

The science tells us @BarackObama needs medication. https://twitter.com/nbcnightlynews/status/628269510139711488 …

11:25 AM - 3 Aug 2015

53 53 Retweets   61 61 likes

[Twitter, 8/3/15]

Steve Milloy:EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy Is "Crazy." Steve Milloy, who runs the climate denial website JunkScience, called EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy "crazy" for saying that the CPP will help protect the planet.

Follow

Steve Milloy @JunkScience

EPA chief says 'we now have a real shot at protecting this beautiful planet of ours.' SHE IS CRAZY.

11:14 AM - 3 Aug 2015

14 14 Retweets   3 3 likes

[Twitter, 8/3/15]

Heartland Institute "Experts": Plan Is "Greater Threat Than Terrorism To America's Prosperity" And Obama "Must Really Hate Coal Miners." The Heartland Institute, the oil-funded front group infamous for its climate denial conferences, published a roundup of reaction from its "policy experts." These included:

James Taylor,who said: "Conveniently for President Obama, the economy-destroying impacts of his new restrictions will kick in only after he leaves office and when he will not have to answer for the economic punishment that will inevitably occur."

Craig Idso,who said: "President Obama's new Clean Power Plan to combat climate change is built upon a pack of lies."

H. Sterling Burnett, who said, "Obama must really hate coal miners and coal-fired power plant workers."

Walter Starck, who said that the plan "poses a far greater threat than terrorism to America's prosperity. It could well be the final nail in its coffin." [Heartland Institute, 8/3/15; Media Matters, 11/28/12]

Free Beacon Writer Mocks Fact That Climate Change Increases Risk Of Asthma Attacks By Saying Everyone Who Breathes Is A "Child-Killer." Washington Free Beacon staff writer Lachlan Markay posted a series of tweets mocking and deriding the Clean Power Plan. He called "carbon pollution" an "Orwellian phrase" and mocked the fact that climate change increases the risk of asthma attacks by writing: "Every time you exhale you're giving a child asthma. I hope you're happy, child-killer":

"Carbon pollution" is right up there among the most Orwellian phrases of the Obama era.

-- Lachlan Markay (@lachlan) August 3, 2015

Every time you exhale you're giving a child asthma. I hope you're happy, child-killer. https://t.co/59YhrVNWRS

-- Lachlan Markay (@lachlan) August 3, 2015

[Twitter, 8/3/15; 8/3/15]

Free Beacon's Markay Compares Obama And EPA's McCarthy To Fictional Meth Dealers. In a tweet responding to a report that West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey said "residents [are] turning to drugs because Obama is shutting down their coal plants," Markay compared Obama and McCarthy to Walter White and Jesse Pinkman -- fictional meth dealers from the TV show "Breaking Bad":

Barack Obama : Gina McCarthy :: Walter White : Jesse Pinkman https://t.co/B9lL0KSVhT

-- Lachlan Markay (@lachlan) August 3, 2015

[Twitter, 8/3/15]

The Wall Street Journal Characterized CPP As A Government Overthrow.The headline for a Wall Street Journal editorial described the CPP as a "Climate Change Putsch." The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines "putsch" as "a secretly plotted and suddenly executed attempt to overthrow a government." [The Wall Street Journal, 8/3/15; Merriam-Webster, accessed 8/3/15]

Tom Nelson: CPP Will Result In "0 Fewer Asthma Attacks & 0 Fewer Premature Deaths." Responding to a tweet by President Obama that said the CPP would lead to 90,000 fewer asthma attacks and prevent 3,600 premature deaths, blogger Tom Nelson tweeted: "This is ridiculous fraud. Real results of CO2-tweaking are 0 fewer asthma attacks & 0 fewer premature deaths in 2030."

Follow

Tom Nelson @tan123

This is ridiculous fraud. Real results of CO2-tweaking are 0 fewer asthma attacks & 0 fewer premature deaths in 2030 https://twitter.com/POTUS/status/628283831104237569 …

12:49 PM - 3 Aug 2015

27 27 Retweets   6 6 likes

[Twitter, 8/3/15]

Steve Milloy Disputes That Carbon Is Harmful: "Ask A Plant." Steve Milloy disputed that carbon is a harmful pollutant by tweeting: "Obama CO2 announcement: Calls CO2 'harmful carbon pollution.' Ask a plant."

...

http://mediamatters.org/research/2015/08/04/the-right-wing-medias-most-unhinged-reactions-t/204764

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:{

My colleagues Aliya Haq and Laurie Johnson recently exposed the new hack-job attacks on the Clean Power Plan by Berman and Associates, an aggressive, polluter-funded public relations firm based in Washington, DC. Berman's 'study' (really a gross attempt at stacking up worse-than-worst-case costs and ignoring the benefits) includes attacks on clean energy in Nevada and New Mexico. The reports don't say much about methodology, but as my colleague Laurie points out, there isn't much to it. It's so filled with inaccuracies and blatant falsehoods hard to know where to begin.

My question: Who asked Berman to bring his junk science out west?

New Mexico and Nevada are both in great positions to meet and beat EPA's Clean Power plan: utilities in both states have plans to retire part (in NM) or all (in NV) of their dirty coal assets over the coming years and few states have better clean energy opportunities (check out the NREL solar, wind and geothermal potential maps). Costs for wind and solar in the West are at all-time lows and both states could see huge benefits from increasing clean energy.

New Mexico and Colorado utility regulators recently approved a wind power purchase by utilities because it was cheaper than any fossil alternative.

Nevada is already exporting solar power to California and with the rise of the new joint energy market with California; it is poised to sell even more. Nevada's Republican Governor Brian Sandoval signed legislation supported by the state's largest utility to end dependence on coal and bring in more renewable energy. That legislation will make compliance with EPA's proposed standard remarkably easy.

In New Mexico the 'report' is being released by the Rio Grande Foundation, a right-wing group funded by the Koch brothers. But it's not Berman's first hit-piece in New Mexico. Last year, one of his employees published an attack on clean energy in the Albuquerque Journal. Which begs the question: who is paying Berman to attack clean energy in the west?

Berman brags about his his ability to hide his funders. The Guardian reports:

"People always ask me one question all the time: 'How do I know that I won't be found out as a supporter of what you're doing?'" Berman told a conference of energy executives last year. The talk was secretly recorded and leaked to the New York Times.

"We run all of this stuff through non-profit organisations that are insulated from having to disclose donors. There is total anonymity. People don't know who supports us," Berman told the energy executives.

Perhaps the funders of this latest attack will remain in the dark. Fine, but let's leave their 'reports' out with the trash.

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possible 2x BERMAN

To Washington insiders he is Dr Evil: [3] the hidden orchestrator of industry campaigns against the Humane Society, Mothers against Drunk Driving, and other seemingly uncontroversial groups.

Now Richard Berman, a one-time lobbyist turned industry strategist, has zeroed in on another target: Barack Obama’s new power plant rules [4].

Over the last year, Berman has secretly routed funding for at least 16 studies and launched at least five front groups attacking Environmental Protection Agency rules cutting carbon dioxide from power plants, the Guardian has learned.

The rules, the centre-piece of Obama’s climate agenda, are due to be finalised in mid-summer. They have come under sustained assault from industry and Republican-controlled Congress – and Berman is right at the heart of it.

The attacks may be gaining traction. The EPA chief, Gina McCarthy, suggested in a speech this week the rules were likely to change in response to public comment.

From the offices of Berman’s PR firm in Washington, at least five new front groups have launched attack ads against the EPA, environmental groups, fishermen and sportsmen, and green building organisations. The groups all use Berman’s address.

Meanwhile, theEmployment Policies Institute [5], a tax-exempt organisation headed by Berman and operating out of his office according to tax filings, funded a series of reports by an ultra-conservative thinktank, the Beacon Hill Institute [6].

The reports, claiming the power plant rules would lead to rolling blackouts, send electricity prices skyrocketing, and devastate local economies, are being published in 16 states by a network of pro-corporate and ultra-conservative thinktanks.

All of the reports were funded by EPI, according to Suffolk University, the host institution for Beacon Hill.Suffolk released a list of such grants. [7]

Berman did not respond to requests for comment. However, a spokesman, Jordan Bruneau, confirmed that EPI was funding the analyses of the EPA regulations.

“Currently IPA is working with economists to determine the effects of certain EPA regulations on particular states,” he said in an email. He said the research was entirely funded by foundations but refused to identify those funders.

Those familiar with Berman say he is a prime example of a new industry strategy of bypassing traditional lobbying organisations, and using thinktanks, foundations, experts, and social media to shape the public conversation and – ultimately – legislation.

“Richard Berman is very well known for certain front groups and for taking money from anonymous sources to fund aggressive campaigns in the interests of the individuals and the corporations who fund him with the understanding that that funding will be kept secret,” said Nick Surgey, research director of the Center for Media and Democracy.

Indeed, Berman claims his ability to hide the funding sources for such campaigns as a particular expertise.

“People always ask me one question all the time: ‘How do I know that I won’t be found out as a supporter of what you’re doing?’” Berman told a conference of energy executives last year. The talk was secretly recorded [8] and leaked to the New York Times.

“We run all of this stuff through non-profit organisations that are insulated from having to disclose donors. There is total anonymity. People don’t know who supports us,” Berman told the energy executives.

He claimed at the time to have already collected six-figure sums from some of the companies in the room – and solicited $3m more to defeat opponents of fracking.

On such a scale, the funding for an economic study taking down the EPA rules appears relatively economical. Beacon Hill received $41,500 from the Employment Policies Institute for a study of the EPA rules, according to the grants list maintained by Suffolk University.

The funds were allocated to produce reports on the impact of the EPA rules in 16 states including: Iowa, Minnesota, Mississippi, Nevada, New Mexico, North Carolina, Tennessee, Wisconsin, South Carolina, Virginia, Louisiana, Rhode Island, Washington Ohio, Alaska and Utah, a spokesman for Suffolk University said.

The university spokesman said in an email that the grants followed university protocol. “Suffolk does not accept research funds from unknown sources,” the spokesman said in an email.

Beacon Hill is associated with a network of ultra-conservative groups working with the American Legislative Exchange Council and funded by patrons of anti-government causes such as the Koch brothers and Searle Freedom Trust.

Its director, David Tuerck, appears on the roster of experts at the Heartland Institute, which adopts an extreme-sceptic position on the existence of human-caused climate change. Tuerck has also featured as a keynote speaker at Heartland’s climate conferences.

He told the Guardian he had mixed views on climate change. “I am not certain that those emissions are significant enough to offset other factor changing the climate,” he said. But he was categorical that efforts to cut emissions were “a waste of time”.

“We are just heaping unnecessary costs on the American economy,” he said. “It’s as obvious as the nose on anybody’s face these EPA regulations are inevitably going to drive up electricity rates.”

Over the years, BHI has been accused of using discredited economic models to exaggerate the costs and downplay the benefits of government regulations.

“I think what is dangerous about BHI is that on the face of it appears to be an academic institute producing independent reports but when you peel back the first layer of the onion you find that Beacon Hill often skews reports in favour of their funders,” Surgey said.

In 2013, Suffolk University publicly repudiated Beacon Hill [9]after the Guardian reported the organisation told prospective funders its studies could undermine a regional climate change initiative. The claim did not follow Suffolk University rules for grant proposals, the university said.

Jay Duffy, a legal fellow at the Clean Air Task Force, said the current BHI analysis of the EPA rules did not meet the usual academic standards. “BHI’s interpretation of EPA’s analysis just doesn’t hold up,” he said. “BHI has skewed timelines, underestimated the social cost of carbon, and overestimated the effect on electricity prices. As a result, their study badly inflates the costs and minimises the benefits of EPA’s draft rules.”

BHI defended the study. “Our costs are within the broad range of costs that the EPA produces,” saidPaul Bachman, who directly oversaw the study. “It’s just that we don’t include – we exclude – what they call the co-benefits of the proposal.”

Berman’s other forays into the environmental arena this year have been hard-hitting.

One prime example was the Environmental Policy Alliance– a mirror image of the government agency – which, according to the website, is “devoted to uncovering the funding and hidden agendas behind environmental activist groups and exploring the intersection between activists and government agencies”.

The group oversees four projects aimed at discrediting the government agency and environmental and conservation groups.

In a full page ad in Politico last year, one of the projects, EPA Facts [10], asked: “What would you call a radical organisation that threatens to shut down 25% of our electrical grid?” The ad crossed off responses including anarchist, terrorist and militia before coming to Obama’s EPA.

Another Berman creation Big Green Radicals [11] claims environmental groups are funded by Russian oil interests close to Vladimir Putin, put up billboards on the Pennsylvania turnpike attacking Lady Gaga, Robert Redford and other celebrities who oppose fracking [12], and sent a poison Valentine to the fossil fuel divestment campaign. [13]

Green Decoys [14]takes on sportsmen and fishermen who support the power plant rules. Leed Exposed [15] opposes green building codes.

The outrageous claims are a key part of the strategy, Berman has claimed. “Berman and Company isn’t your average PR firm,” his company website said. “We don’t just change the debate. If necessary, we start the debate.”

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5/16 summit

ALEC model bills opposing the Clean Power Plan include:

Other Elements of ALEC's Anti-Environment Agenda:

Blocking local environmental laws. ALEC has also sought to undermine local efforts to protect our environment.

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y Amazon, Apple, Google and Microsoft filed an :{amicus brief:(style="box-sizing:border-box;margin:0px;padding:0px"):}: in support of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Clean Power Plan, showing the importance of the plan to major electricity consumers and the growing political advocacy by major technology companies for renewable energy.

Today Amazon, Apple, Google and Microsoft filed an amicus brief in support of the EPA’s Clean Power Plan, showing the importance of the plan to major electricity consumers and the growing political advocacy by major technology companies for renewable energy.

In response, Gary Cook, senior energy campaigner for Greenpeace said: 

“Amazon, Apple, Google and Microsoft have each committed to powering their operations with 100 percent renewable energy and they know that achieving these corporate commitments will not be possible without state and federal policy solutions such as the Clean Power Plan that will drive new investment in renewable energy. 

“Contrary to claims by Clean Power Plan opponents that these policies will drive business outside of the U.S., some of the largest and fastest growing companies are saying explicitly that they want policies that will lead to a renewable energy future. It’s past time that the governors who have challenged the Clean Power Plan and utilities themselves respond by joining the transition from coal to clean energy.”

As the brief highlights, these companies operate data centers across 12 states and have already been using a range of strategies to successfully deploy renewable energy, strategies that could be pursued by utilities who are covered under the Clean Power Plan. 

Greenpeace has challenged major technology companies to help build an internet powered by renewable energy, including by engaging with state and federal policymakers to support policies that would increase renewable energy investment.

West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey, who is leading the charge, called it “the single most onerous and illegal regulations that we’ve seen coming out of DC in a long time.” He added, “the EPA cannot do what it intends to do legally.”

Morrisey is joined by attorneys general from Texas, Alabama, Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Jersey, Ohio, South Carolina, South Dakota, Utah, Wisconsin, Wyoming, Arizona and North Carolina.

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luther strange PR

February 9, 2016

ATTORNEY GENERAL STRANGE PRAISES U.S. SUPREME COURT STAY OF OBAMA EPA’S CLEAN POWER PLAN

(MONTGOMERY) – Alabama Attorney General Luther Strange praised the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision late Tuesday to stay the Obama administration from enforcing its overreaching Clean Power Plan while Alabama and 24 other states challenge the legality of the EPA rule in federal court.

“This is a tremendous victory not only for the rule of law, but also for the people of Alabama who stand to pay higher electric bills should the unprecedented and illegal EPA rule be enacted,” said Attorney General Strange.

“The Obama administration’s EPA rule would shutter coal-fired power plants around the country, including in Alabama, while killing jobs and raising power bills for hard-working families.  Just two weeks ago, Alabama joined 24 other states in asking the U.S. Supreme Court to stay the onerous EPA ruling so that we could fight it in court.  Today’s decision is very good news and certainly bolsters the resolve of our coalition of states to press our case all the way to the Supreme Court if necessary.”

Those urging the U.S. Supreme Court to immediately halt the EPA’s unlawful power plan include: Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Jersey, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, West Virginia, Wisconsin and Wyoming, along with the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality, Mississippi Public Service Commission, North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality and Oklahoma Department of Environmental Quality.

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https://www.edf.org/climate/3-times-industry-has-missed-cost-estimates

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http://insideclimatenews.org/news/17032016/climate-change-deniers-clean-power-plan-court-of-appeals

Veteran climate science deniers have joined the fight to block the Clean Power Plan, the heart of the Obama administration's climate policies, attempting to convince an appeals court that supposed doubts about climate science should halt the Environmental Protection Agency's rules to slow carbon pollution.

Thirteen contrarian scientists, economists and professors, many with long-documented ties to fossil fuel industry groups and organizations committed to spreading doubt about climate change, are claiming the EPA's carbon rules are "entirely based on scientific propositions that have been shown to be invalidated by highly credible empirical data."

"This brief is simply a recitation of the climate change denier myths, falsehoods and half-truths that have long-been debunked. It is beneath the dignity of our courts to even have to consider such nonsense," said Michael Mann, a professor of meteorology and director of the Earth System Science Center at Penn State University.

"I suspect that, to the extent the court does consider this document, it will be viewed as exhibit A in the case for intellectual bankruptcy of industry-funded climate change denialism," he added.

The Clean Power Plan aims to significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions from power plants and is the cornerstone of President Barack Obama's efforts to combat climate change. The challenge to the rules, brought by more than two dozen states and their industry supporters, currently rests in the hands of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. The Supreme Court issued a surprising stay of the plan in February while the litigation runs its course.

The climate contrarians asked the court to "step back from its past approach" of relying on the international scientific consensus that global warming is happening and is caused by human activity. Their brief asks the court to "take a hard look at whether there is truly any credible proof that, in the real world, rising atmospheric CO2 concentrations impact global temperatures to a measurable degree. At this point, there certainly seems to be no such proof."

Many of the scientists have signed onto similar briefs in other cases in the past, to no avail.

John Abraham, a professor of thermal sciences at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota, said the scientists involved are not qualified to assess projections about climate change. Abraham is a co-founder of the Climate Rapid Response Team, a group of scientists who try to correct the record when denialists present their version of the science.

"Many of the signers are not climate scientists at all, have not published anything in climate change, in some cases have published very little, and in other cases have made past predictions that were shown to be incorrect," Abraham said.

These scientists reject out of hand the EPA's finding that carbon dioxide poses a danger to the environment. The agency reached that decision after the Supreme Court ruled in the landmark case Massachusetts v. EPA in 2007.

In the opening words of that decision, the court's majority cited "respected scientific opinion that a well-documented rise in global temperatures and attendant climatological changes have resulted from a significant increase in the atmospheric concentration of 'greenhouse gases,'" and that the EPA was bound by law to act.

But ever since, this group of denialists has been arguing that the issue of whether global warming is happening and whether humans are to blame is still unsettled. 

Mainstream scientists, however, have no such uncertainty.

As a typical report from a mainstream scientific organization, the National Academy of Sciences, puts it:

"Humans' use of fossil fuel since the start of the Industrial Revolution has begun to modify the Earth's climate in ways that few could have imagined a century ago," the report by researchers from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine said last week. "The consequences of this change to the climate are seemingly everywhere: average temperatures are rising, precipitation patterns are changing, ice sheets are melting, and sea levels are rising. These changes are affecting the availability and quality of water supplies, how and where food is grown, and even the very fabric of ecosystems on land and in the sea."

The latest friends-of-the-court brief is signed by a familiar coterie of climate change skeptics, including S. Fred Singer, one of global warming's most notorious deniers.

He and others who signed the brief, includingJoseph S. D'Aleo, a former Weather Channel meteorologist, have connections to The Heartland Institute, a libertarian think tank with ties to fossil fuel interests, including David and Charles Koch. Heartland has long championed efforts to obfuscate the science of global warming.

"What we're trying to do is introduce reality into the picture and hopefully it gets the judges to push back and wait to get more information," D'Aleo said. He added the rules could hamstring the economy while saddling the poor with higher energy costs.

Others, like Theodore R. Eck, have directly worked at fossil fuel companies. According to his qualifications listed in the brief, Eck is a former chief economist of Amoco Corp. and Exxon Venezuela, and sits on the Advisory Board of the Gas Technology Institute and Energy Intelligence Group. Craig D. Idso, a former director of environmental science at coal company Peabody Energy, is founder of the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change, which claims rising carbon dioxide levels will benefit the planet by increasing crop yields—a long-discredited argument.

Still others, like Don J. Easterbrook, have been called on to testify against global warming in legislative proceedings. In 2013, Easterbrook told a Senate Energy, Environment and Telecommunications Committee in Washington State that "global warming ended in 1998."

But the main arguments are not legalistic, but familiar canards that have been continually and widely rejected by mainstream science. Key among their reasoning is that the EPA's "three lines of evidence" in support of the Clean Power Plan have been "definitively invalidated by real world empirical temperature data" and that higher carbon dioxide emissions "would yield only benefits."

"As a result, claims of recent record-setting global average temperatures based on this data are simply invalid. The highly credible satellite data, from 1979 to date, show regional, not 'global' warming," the brief says.

In fact, according to data from two U.S. agencies and Britain's climate research agency, 2014 and 2015 were the hottest years on record. Officials have said 2016 is expected to be even hotter.

"So, this document omits data, makes claims not supported by its data, and does not provide proper links to the data contained in the report," Abraham said.

Abraham also contends the idea that scientists have not been faithfully reporting temperature data is "far less convincing than recognizing that 13 third-rate scientists might not know what they're talking about."

Oral arguments before the U.S. Court of Appeals are scheduled for early June.

The contrarians' brief is one of 13 submitted so far in support of the petitioners. They come from groups including former public utility commissioners as well as members of Congress (34 senators and 171 representatives, including Republican Sens. Mitch McConnell, John McCain, Marco Rubio and James Inhofe). The other briefs, however, don't explicitly question the science.

So far, briefs in support of the EPA have not been filed. Motions in support of the EPA have been filed by organizations such as theEnvironmental Defense Fund, and a group of public health organizations that includes the American Medical Association and the American College of Preventative Medicine.

PUBLISHED UNDER:

DENIAL

REGULATION

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~CPP

http://littlesis.org/maps/872-lawyers-suing-the-epa-over-clean-power-plan

 Lawyers from coal-dependent states, led by West Virginia, are challenging President Obama’s Clean Power Plan. Joining their effort is an army of industry-funded law firms that specialize in fighting the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Together, they will argue that the EPA does not have any authority under Section 111(d) of the Clean Air Act to issue the carbon regulations; they will also contest the legality of the “fence line” used to set state emission targets. Yet, buried in coverage of the litigation is the fact that the coalition suing the EPA is connected to some of the largest electric utility companies in the country – and many have purposefully kept themselves at arms’ length so that their customers never know they are funding lawyers who are working to stop one of  President Obama’s main pillars to fight climate change. Policymakers, regulators, and customers should know what electricity companies are secretly working together with coal companies to sue the EPA.

Above is a network map built using the LittleSis free database. It details connections between powerful people and organizations; the data is derived from government filings, news articles, and other reputable sources. This map illustrates the links between the handful of lawyers involved in the litigation against the Clean Power Plan and the companies paying their firms.

The National Mining Association (NMA), shown in the middle of the LittleSis network map, filed a stay with the EPA to stop the plan from going into effect earlier this month. This is in addition to a stay filed on August 5 by the coal-dependent states that has recently resulted in the attorneys general filing an emergency petition in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit asking for federal judges to postpone the rule’s deadlines.

NMA was represented by**Troutman Sanders** in *Michigan et al. vs. EPA*, which was the case decided in June regarding the mercury and air toxics standard (MATS). NMA is also a member in the Utility Air Regulatory Group (UARG), run by attorneys at Hunton & Williams. Clicking on NMA in the network map will highlight the connections and reveal the manner in which the trade association is linked to the companies and/or lawyers.

After the Clean Power Plan was released, The New York Times reported that Peter Glaser, an attorney at Troutman Sanders, has been holding meetings with Roger Martella Jr. ofSidley Austin to devise the legal strategy to throw out EPA’s regulation via the courts. Additionally, the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE), another trade association that is also a member of the Utility Air Regulatory Group and includes Southern Company as a member, said, “It’s illegal and we will not stop opposing it until it is withdrawn completely.” ACCCE is shown above NMA in the network map and is linked to other companies besides Southern.

The Electric Reliability Coordinating Council, a group of power and coal companies run out ofBracewell & Giuliani that also pays Hunton & Williams, said the that final plan still intrudes into state affairs and that it contains issues that could expose it to significant legal challenges. 

And when the EPA was formally published in the Federal Register, Paul Monies of The Oklahoman reported Baker & Hostetler LLP is representing Oklahoma Attorney General Pruitt in the lawsuit. Attorney David Rivkin said, "They're really trying to hurt coal on every possible regulatory means."

Here are some of the companies that fund law firms known to be working against the Clean Power Plan: 

Bracewell & Giuliani’s :{Electric Reliability Coordinating Council:(style="box-sizing:border-box;font-weight:700"):}::

•   Ameren

•   Arch Coal

•   DTE Energy

•   Duke Energy

•   Energy Future Holdings

•   Southern Company

Hunton & Williams’ :{Utility Air Regulatory Group:(style="box-sizing:border-box;font-weight:700"):}::

•   American Electric Power

•   Edison Electric Institute

•   Duke Energy

•   Energy Future Holdings

•   Southern Company

Troutman Sanders:

•   Alpha Natural Resources

•   Arch Coal

•   Cloud Peak Energy

•   Energy Future Holdings

•   National Mining Association

•   Peabody Energy

•   Southern Company

Sidley Austin:

In 2011, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in *American Electric Power v. Connecticut*that corporations cannot be sued for greenhouse gas emissions under federal common law, because the Clean Air Act delegates the management of carbon dioxide emissions to the EPA. Peter Keisler, a partner at Sidley Austin, argued on behalf of the petitioners:

•   American Electric Power

•   Cinergy Company

•   Southern Company

•   Xcel Energy

Earlier this year, Keisler, along with Roger Martella Jr. also argued on behalf of the Pacific Legal Foundation in a case led by Murray Energy seeking to preemptively throw out the Clean Power Plan. The original plaintiffs before the court were Murray Energy and West Virginia. Peabody Energy, the Utility Air Regulatory Group, Pacific Legal Foundation, National Mining Association, the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, and 13 additional states joined the plaintiffs’ cause.  In June, the federal appeals court in Washington DC dismissed that lawsuit as premature.

This LittleSis network map will be updated as polluters fund more attorneys in the fight against the Clean Power Plan. Others with new information are encouraged to build off of this map and connect more companies to the law firms. Not only is it important for people to see these connections, but many will remember that in 2009, Duke Energy was pressured to leave ACCCE after it was caught playing both sides of the Waxman-Markey debate: it publically supported the bill but also was a paying member of ACCCE, which was working to kill the legislation. Duke Energy also quit the National Association of Manufacturers for similar reasons. If utility companies voice support for the Clean Power Plan, it’s crucial to put pressure on them to leave front groups or trade associations working to fight the EPA.

:{Pacific Legal Foundation Background

}: 

Ronald Zumbrun and Ramond Momboise, former advisors to California Gov. Ronald Reagan, founded the Pacific Legal Foundation. The founding results from Lewis F. Powell’s secret memo to a friend at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce titled "Attack on the American Free Enterprise System.” Powell wanted the business community to create non-for-profit law firms; thus, thePacific Legal Foundation was created. It’s website says it exists to fight “tyranny” engendered by “overzealous bureaucracies and government red tape” and that it is a foe of “government regulators and environmental extremists.” Powell would go on to become a Supreme Court justice.

Patric Morrisey Background

Patrick Morrisey is the Attorney General in West Virginia. Besides leading the states to sue the EPA earlier this year, he recently joined with 15 other states to ask the EPA for an immediate stay of its Clean Power Plan pending the outcome of an impending legal challenge to the rule. From 2004 to 2010, Morrisey was a partner at Sidley Austin LLP. In his campaign to become Attorney General American Electric Power, Alpha Natural Resources, Arch Coal, and Consol Energy, just to name a few, donated to his campaign. 

Baker & Hosteler Background

In Michigan v. EPA in which the U.S. Supreme Court in 5-4 vote struck down the EPA's carefully crafted rules to limit the emission of mercury and other toxic pollutants from oil and coal power plants, David B. Rivkin Jr. of Baker & Hostetler represented the Cato Institute, which in turn has received millions from energy interests including the David H. Koch Foundation and ExxonMobil. Rivkin worked in the Reagan Justice Department and was the associate general counsel at the Department of Energy under George H. W. Bush. More recently, he has been part of the legal effort to strike down Obamacare and also has defeated lawsuits aimed at holding former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld personally liable for alleged torture in Iraq. 

Rivkin also argued the cause for petitioner State of Texas in Texas v. EPA, which was decided in July 2013. The U.S. Court of Appeals slapped down Texas’ attempt to block the EPA from controlling the state’s system for issuing permits to power plants.

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