Posted on December 28, 2010 by John Crawford
By James R. Farrell
Butler, Snow, O’Mara, Stevens & Cannada, PLLC (www.butlersnow.com)
Regulation of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions has become a reality. Although the Supreme Court’s 2007 ruling in Massachusetts v. EPA deserves much of the credit for EPA’s aggressive response to global warming, congressional inaction on comprehensive climate change legislation ultimately set in motion the agency-driven agenda that has led our country to an historic yet extremely controversial crossroads in environmental regulation. The Supreme Court’s conclusion that GHGs constitute air pollutants as defined by the Clean Air Act required EPA to determine whether GHG emissions from motor vehicles cause or contribute to climate change that is reasonably anticipated to endanger the public health or welfare; however, the Court’s requirement for regulatory action did not preclude the possibility of a legislative response.
Despite the dim prospects for comprehensive climate change legislation today in the wake of the turbulent 2010 mid-year elections, the political landscape appeared far more favorable little more than eighteen months ago. On June 26, 2009, the House had narrowly passed the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 (the “Waxman-Markey Bill”) by a vote of 219-212. The Waxman-Markey Bill featured a cap and trade component to regulate GHG emissions, and the bill would have required a seventeen percent reduction in GHG emissions from 2005 levels by 2020 and an eighty percent reduction by 2050.
In the Senate, Senators John Kerry (D-MA), Joseph Lieberman (I-CT), and Lindsay Graham (R-SC) had been hard at work on a comparable climate change bill dubbed the American Power Act. In early 2010, the bill appeared to have bipartisan support due in large part to its provision for expanded offshore drilling, an early and significant concession by the bill’s sponsors. But when the Deepwater Horizon exploded on April 20th, everything changed. As public outrage at the offshore drilling industry grew daily in response to the unprecedented magnitude of the oil spill, it triggered a proportional decrease in political will for comprehensive climate change legislation. By the time the American Power Act was introduced on May 12th, Senator Graham had already withdrawn his support insisting that the ongoing and more immediate threat posed by the Gulf oil spill had “made it extremely difficult for transformational legislation in the area of energy and climate to garner bipartisan support . . . .”
In the end, the legislative response to climate change that had once appeared likely – if not imminent – never materialized. In contrast, EPA has wasted no time since Massachusetts v. EPA engaging in regulation-making intended to address climate change. The culmination and cornerstone of this fervent EPA activity is EPA’s Prevention of Significant Deterioration and Title V Greenhouse Gas Tailoring Rule(the “Tailoring Rule”), which will usher in a new and hotly contested era of GHG regulation on January 2, 2011. The Tailoring Rule’s phased-in approach to regulation means that the regulatory net it casts will gradually widen with time, initially targeting those stationary sources known to be the largest emitters of GHG emissions but eventually encompassing some smaller sources as well.
Whether or not you’ll be ringing in the new year this year likely depends on your political persuasion. For many environmental groups who have lobbied tirelessly for greenhouse gas regulation, 2011 is a long-awaited (and soon to be much-celebrated) new year. For many in industry, however, 2011 is likely to be a year of nostalgia filled with no less than 365 opportunities to remember fondly the less regulated days of yesteryear. Happy New Year!
Butler, Snow, O’Mara, Stevens & Cannada, PLLC (www.butlersnow.com)
· John A. Crawford
· Michael D. Caples
· James I. Palmer, Jr.
Tags: Air, GHG emissions, Greenhouse Gases (GHGs), Greenhouse Gases (GHGs)