{"id":373,"date":"2010-11-24T06:08:17","date_gmt":"2010-11-24T11:08:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/climatechange\/?p=373"},"modified":"2012-01-31T15:23:44","modified_gmt":"2012-01-31T20:23:44","slug":"white-paper-epas-impending-greenhouse-gas-regulations-digging-through-the-morass-of-litigation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/climatechange\/2010\/11\/24\/white-paper-epas-impending-greenhouse-gas-regulations-digging-through-the-morass-of-litigation\/","title":{"rendered":"White Paper – “EPA’s Impending Greenhouse Gas Regulations: Digging through the Morass of Litigation”"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>

Gregory E. Wannier
\nDeputy Director<\/p>\n

CCCL is happy to announce the release of a new white paper. \u00a0It can be accessed here<\/a>, and the executive summary for this paper is below:<\/p>\n

As the U.S. Congress has failed to pass meaningful climate legislation, the EPA has initiated a series of regulations designed to recognize greenhouse gases as endangering human health and welfare, and set greenhouse gas emission standards for vehicle fleets and for major stationary sources.<\/p>\n

Unsurprisingly these efforts have been challenged in the DC Circuit Court of Appeals.\u00a0 Challenges to the Endangerment Finding (which focus on EPA\u2019s reliance on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) and to the Tailpipe Rule (which claim that it is redundant, and that EPA improperly failed to consider its effects on other regulations) rely on climate skepticism more than they do on legal doctrine.\u00a0 The case against EPA\u2019s Timing Rule, which justifies application of GHG regulations to stationary sources, centers on real ambiguities in the Clean Air Act, though it may fairly claim judicial deference via Chevron v. NRDC<\/em>.\u00a0 This makes the \u201cTailoring\u201d Rule claim, that it disregards explicit statutory regulation guidelines (in order to accomplish the \u201cbroader intent\u201d of the statute), the strongest challenge to EPA\u2019s actions.<\/p>\n

One striking fact about these suits is the pure number of claims: over 80 distinct claims were filed by 35 different petitioners to these four rules.\u00a0 This has necessitated extensive simplification of the litigation, including consolidation into three major cases (and a minor sub-case).\u00a0 Petitioners have sought further to have all three consolidated cases heard by the same panel, perhaps in an effort to link all regulations together as one set of illegal activity.\u00a0 However, the three cases cover three different Titles of the Clean Air Act, so coordination here may not improve judicial efficiency to the extent that has justified coordination of cases in the past.<\/p>\n

The petitioners have also moved to stay implementation of EPA\u2019s rules, due to take effect on January 2, 2011.\u00a0 The most relevant question here, apart from a preliminary determination of the merits of the case, will be whether they would suffer \u201cirreparable harm\u201d if regulations were to move forward.\u00a0 This argument will focus around the economic harm to national industries that could come with increased costs, specifically whether it could lead to immediate loss of economic activity; and around the possibility of avoiding a debilitating backlog of building permits once these requirements take hold.\u00a0 The case against staying vehicle regulations looks strong; that against stationary source permit requirements will depend significantly on economic analyses.<\/p>\n

There is also some question of what remedy might be appropriate if the DC Circuit rules against EPA in these cases.\u00a0 The two-prong analysis used in such cases will consider the extent of EPA\u2019s deviation from the law and the detrimental effect of immediately overturning existing regulations.\u00a0 Treatment of similar rules in the past suggests that a strong detrimental effect to an established existing permit structure will make courts hesitant to step in with a heavy hand, instead remanding to agencies for modification in line with their decision.\u00a0 Thus, the outcome of motions for stay may well affect the final remedy even beyond its obvious predictive power of the ultimate ruling on the merits: it will determine whether EPA will already have a working regulatory structure in place.<\/p>\n

This litigation activity merits attention.\u00a0 In the absence of viable climate legislation for at least two years, these decisions will have important bearing on the extent to which the United States is able to address its greenhouse gas emissions going forward.<\/p>\n


\n<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Gregory E. Wannier Deputy Director CCCL is happy to announce the release of a new white paper. \u00a0It can be accessed here, and the executive summary for this paper is below: As the U.S. Congress has failed to pass meaningful climate legislation, the EPA has initiated a series of regulations designed to recognize greenhouse gases […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":583,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5677],"tags":[5529],"class_list":{"0":"post-373","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-clean-air-act","7":"tag-epa-clean-air-act-ghg-rules","8":"czr-hentry"},"yoast_head":"\nWhite Paper - "EPA's Impending Greenhouse Gas Regulations: Digging through the Morass of Litigation" - Climate Law Blog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/climatechange\/2010\/11\/24\/white-paper-epas-impending-greenhouse-gas-regulations-digging-through-the-morass-of-litigation\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"White Paper - "EPA's Impending Greenhouse Gas Regulations: Digging through the Morass of Litigation" - Climate Law Blog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Gregory E. 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