Energy industry stall tacftic: Embrace the EPA

EPA administrator Lisa Jackson announcing national emissions standards for greenhouse gasses (Photo courtesy of EPA website)

WASHINGTON — Earlier this year, when it seemed plausible that Congress would address climate change in 2009, energy industry representatives were hyping the need for legislation to fend off regulation from the Environmental Protection Agency. When the EPA first declared carbon dioxide a threat to humankind in April – the necessary first step before they could begin regulating the greenhouse gas – industry groups were quick with the condemnations of EPA action.

“A more potent Anti-Stimulus Package would be difficult to imagine,” wrote Competitive Enterprise Institute senior fellow Marlo Lewis. The American Petroleum Institute called the motion on regulation “an endangerment to the American economy and to every American family.”

But now Congress doesn’t seem likely to pass a new law regulating planet-warming emissions this year. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid indicated to reporters this week that a climate bill could wait until 2010. And with the delay, attention is turning once again to what the EPA will do to regulated greenhouse gases in the absence of a new law.

But instead of pitching a fit, the same anti-environmental groups that once decried EPA regulation are now welcoming it. The EPA’s regulatory process is by nature slow and deliberate, with each regulation taking months to put in place. Once the regulatory process is completed, rules are often held up in years of litigation. And even if a regulation survives that, it can be reversed by a future administration. On the Clean Air Act specifically, the technologies necessary to meet the obligations of the law don’t yet exist for carbon dioxide. Meanwhile, though many did hope at one time for a climate bill this year, one that would give them more long-term certainty about carbon pricing, the House-passed Waxman-Markey climate bill is tougher than what many in the energy industry have lobbied to pass into law. Thus, the prospect of EPA regulations — once so feared by many in polluting industries — is now being welcomed as a stall tactic.

Read more at Michigan Messenger’s sister site the Washington Independent