WASHINGTON – A multistate petition filed today with the U.S. Supreme Court asks the court to require a ruling from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on whether it will regulate motor-vehicle greenhouse gas emissions.
The high court ruled last April that, contrary to the agency’s claims, the EPA has the authority to regulate such emissions under the Clean Air Act. It also ruled that the agency could not rely on policy preferences in deciding whether to exercise that authority; instead, the court said, the EPA must make a decision based on scientific information about risks to the public health and welfare.
“A full year has passed since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled [in Massachusetts v. EPA] that EPA must issue a science-based decision as to whether carbon dioxide is endangering public health or welfare,” R.I. Attorney General Patrick C. Lynch said in a statement this afternoon, “yet EPA has provided zero explanation, zero guidance and no decision on a matter of crucial importance to the fate of our state, nation and planet.
“Of course it’s inexcusable, but it’s also typical of the Bush administration’s highly selective value system that almost always puts the concerns of industry first and those of the public welfare in a distant second,” Lynch said.
Today’s filing – a Petition for Mandamus in which the attorneys general of 17 states, including Rhode Island and Massachusetts, were joined by the District of Columbia, two cities and 11 environmental advocacy groups – seeks a court order requiring an EPA decision within 60 days.
The petition states that the EPA already has “made clear its belief that greenhouse gases were in fact endangering the public health or welfare,” Lynch’s office said. “Once EPA arrived at this judgment, however, it should have acted to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act. On multiple occasions, the agency has promised that it would respond to the Supreme Court’s opinion by issuing an endangerment determination and draft motor vehicle emission standards by the end of 2007,” yet no such standard has been issued.
The filing further contends that “the EPA has already prepared an endangerment determination, and actually implemented its internal process of drafting an affirmative endangerment determination before its self-imposed deadline,” Lynch’s office said. But last week, the agency “said it would delay responding to the Supreme Court’s opinion until after it conducts a lengthy public comment period later this year.”
Filing the petition – besides Rhode Island, Massachusetts and various environmental groups – are the states of Arizona, California, Connecticut, Delaware, Iowa, Illinois, Maryland, Maine, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Vermont and Washington; as well as the District of Columbia, the Corporation Counsel for the City of New York and the City Solicitor of Baltimore.
Rhode Island and 10 other states also had joined Massachusetts in its original lawsuit
