Monthly Archives: February 2010

Yesterday, EPA Administrator Jackson issued a letter to Senator Jay Rockefeller responding to certain questions regarding EPA regulation of GHGs under existing Clean Air Act authority, including promulgation of the so-called “Tailoring Rule”, describing how stationary source regulation under the existing PSD program would be phased-in once GHGs are subject to regulation. Here are the highlights: [...]

The grand total is 16 separate challenges to EPA’s endangerment finding, according to Greenwire. I’m not one of those lawyers who regularly bash the legal profession. I still recall my law school professor, Henry Hansmann, stating that the role of lawyers is in fact to be transaction-cost minimizers, and I think that that is largely true. That being [...]

Late last week, the CEQ issued its long-awaited draft Guidance on how to factor climate change into NEPA reviews. CEQ explicitly stated the draft is not effective at this time. CEQ will take comment for 90 days and “intends to expeditiously issue this Guidance in final form” after close of the comment period. Assuming CEQ does so, it [...]

Earlier this week, the Southeastern Legal Foundation filed a petition for review of the EPA Endangerment Finding with the District of Columbia Court of Appeals. It’s not really surprising that someone filed suit, but the list of plaintiffs is interesting – though more for who is not on it than who is. There is not a single [...]

For those of you who missed it, the SEC finally issued an interpretive release last week clarifying public company disclosure obligations concerning climate change. Rather than rehash it here, I am instead linking to the client alert that we did on the topic. It is worth noting that, as mentioned in the alert, the release has [...]

While Congress may be fiddling on climate legislation, Senators Carper and Alexander are attempting to put three pollutant legislation back on the congressional agenda. Yesterday, they introduced an aggressive three pollutant bill. Here are the highlights. The bill would: Codify the CAIR program through 2011 Gradually reduce the cap on SO2 emission allowances to 1.5 million tons by [...]

Until now, I haven’t posted about the climate change email brouhaha. I haven’t thought it mattered. I didn’t think it affected the underlying validity of climate change science and I still don’t. That science seems overwhelming to me.  However, I have concluded that the email issue matters.  Yesterday’s ClimateWire reported that climate scientists had repeatedly ducked Freedom of [...]

Given the stories this week of continuing efforts in Congress to preclude EPA from regulating GHGs under existing Clean Air Act authority, I couldn’t resist this headline.  The first story is that three House members, including two Democrats (House Agriculture Committee Chair Collin Peterson and Missouri Rep. Ike Skelton) have followed the lead of the [...]