US Environmental Protection Agency greenhouse gas rules create friction at federal court

Heavy industry argued in federal court yesterday that environmental regulations were based on bad science, particularly surrounding the claim that greenhouse gas emissions were a danger to human health. The majority of US industry is staunchly opposed to any regulation of greenhouse gas emissions, and lobbying groups are taking any opportunity to nullify the new rules on emissions created by the Obama government.

The argument against the regulations is based on the claim that ‘uncertain evidence’ was used to reach the 90 per cent certainty required that carbon emissions are responsible for ‘harmful’ climate change.

One of the three judges in the case, Circuit Judge David Tatel said, "To win here, you have to make an argument that EPA's decision is actually arbitrary and capricious," implying that scientific doubt alone was not enough to overturn the EPA’s rules, as the EPA had already decided it was sufficient enough.

There is also an argument from the group that rule limiting emissions from vehicles has led to inappropriate rules for power plants. The debate has rumbled on for some time, with the Supreme Court ruling it was the EPA’s decision whether to regulate emissions if they considered them to be a danger to public health. This was endorsed by the EPA in 2009 and national standards have followed, although they have not been ratified by Congress.

Today the coalition will make the case that only applying the Clean Air Act to larger stationary sources is overstepping its power. This is known as the tailoring rule and is expected to be heatedly debated.

On the face of it, tailoring makes sense, whereby smaller emitters such as schools don’t have to obtain emissions permits – which on a small scale like this would be a regulatory headache, but it also creates another regulatory headache in who qualifies and where the line should be drawn, something the critics have jumped on.

The argument against the EPA states that they ignored comments about stationary pollution from the group and that they had not considered the tailoring rule stage in the motor vehicle rule.

The case continues.