Later On

Kate Sheppard in the Washington Independent:

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.

“I think most people in industry have come to the conclusion that they’d rather deal with the uncertainty of the Clean Air Act rather than the certainty of a very expensive program like you have under Waxman-Markey,” Jeffrey Holmstead, the former assistant administrator in the EPA’s Air and Radiation division during the Bush administration. Holmstead now represents a number of energy-sector clients for the prominent international law firm Bracewell & Giuliani.

“I speak to a lot of industry folks. Most all of them would prefer climate legislation, something that gave them certainty,” said Holmstead. “But they would like what they consider to be reasonable legislation … But that’s not the Waxman-Markey bill.”

In April, the EPA followed through with the Supreme Court’s 2007 directive to determine whether carbon dioxide is a threat to human health and welfare. The agency’s finding that it is indeed a threat is expected to be finalized this fall. Once it is, the EPA will be required to begin the process of regulating emissions from a a variety of sources.

Throughout the initial stages of regulation, EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson has maintained that she, and the rest of the administration, would prefer not to regulate, as the Clean Air Act was not designed to regulate carbon dioxide and a Congress-passed cap-and-trade bill would better address both environmental and economic concerns. But Jackson and other advocates of passing a bill this year have repeatedly used the threat of EPA regulation to push Congress toward action. “The race is clearly on and time is of the essence,” she told reporters back in April following her testimony before the House Energy and Commerce Committee in support of their climate bill.

Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), who is authoring the Senate’s climate bill, offered similarly aggressive warnings…

Continue reading. The best approach is the most straightforward: a carbon tax.