Years of Legal Action Has Led to Today’s Controversial Environmental Policies
Washington State Attorney General Bob Ferguson chimed in on Obama’s controversial new carbon reduction standards by issuing a statement.
The statement actually serves (unintentionally) as a reminder for citizens as to how long environmental groups have been pressuring the government to buy into global warming or climate change.
Ferguson said Monday “legal action by Washington, other states, result in strong new EPA rules.”
While many Americans are just now becoming aware, or perhaps just a few years ago starting paying attention to the effects of damaging environmental policies, Washington state has been one of the “leaders” in buying into climate change. From Ferguson’s release Monday:
‘In 2006, Washington state sued the EPA along with a group of 10 other states, the District of Columbia and the City of New York. They argued that the federal Clean Air Act required the EPA to set performance standards for greenhouse gas emissions from power plants.
In 2007, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Massachusetts v. EPA that the EPA has legal authority to regulate greenhouse gases as ‘air pollutants’ under the Clean Air Act. The court also ruled that the EPA must determine whether these gases cause or contribute to air pollution that may endanger public health or welfare.
Following Massachusetts v. EPA, the EPA agreed in a settlement with the states and other parties that it would take action to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from power plants.
The EPA subsequently published a proposed rule to limit greenhouse gas emissions from new power plants by establishing performance standards for carbon dioxide emissions.
Ferguson and 12 other state attorneys general sent a letter to the federal Environmental Protection Agency in 2013, urging strong new rules to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.”
At first glance, it appears even the EPA was dragging it’s feet just a bit back in 2006. But now, they have become the enforcement arm for Obama’s new environmental policies. Why is this important?
Because using the Clean Air Act and the EPA means Obama, and other federal and state “leaders” can end-run Congress or state legislatures and implement new laws and standards without their approval, or YOURS. We will now be faced with increasing electrical and fuel costs, millions (if not billions) will continue to be dumped into failed green energy policies and the economy will take significant hits.
Why did Washington state and others sue the EPA? Who started these lawsuits? Who’s been pressuring the government to enact green policies, laws, and manipulate the Clean Air Act? Special interest groups who usually operate in the shadows. Well-funded environmentalists who are also influential in Gov. Inslee’s policies.
It appears AG Ferguson is in step with Gov. Inslee, OR Gov. Kitzhaber, and President Obama in throwing all his chips into the theories of climate change, global warming and carbon pollution. Doesn’t matter if the economy suffers, gas prices skyrocket, and electrical rates soar. These guys don’t work in the private sector, so they’re never going to feel the economic pain.