Joe Lieberman“I’m trying to work with the group in the middle,” says Sen. Joe Lieberman, describing to National Journal his role in brokering a climate agreement.  He’s pushing particularly hard for more support for nuclear power in a climate bill, saying, “I think it’s one of the key bridges that I can help build to bring people across the bridge to support global warming legislation.”

Lieberman says he believes a climate bill will get 60 votes and pass, if not this year, then in the first quarter of 2010.  And he says the bill doesn’t have to be perfect: “[T]he fact is, this is a problem that we’ll be solving for 50 to 100 years. Future congresses will come back and change this based on experience, over and over. So therefore it seems to me that it’s just important to get it started.”

While the public focus is on health care, Lieberman says senators are working on climate change behind the scenes: “There’s a lot happening in the shadows here and so far I would say it’s very constructive and in most cases it’s bipartisan, which is interesting. Certainly our nuclear group is bipartisan. So far the support and opposition to climate change legislation has been much too partisan. I hope we can overcome that with these focused groups.”

Lieberman was one of the earliest congressional supporters of cap-and-trade, cosponsoring the first two pieces of climate legislation to come to the floor of the Senate in 2003 and 2005. 

Track the debate and take action >>>

Do you know more about this senator’s stance on climate legislation?  Tell us.

Find out about other senators by clicking on their names in the right column.

Related Links:

Obama headed to Copenhagen, sets the bar for success

What to make of the new climate poll

Obama administration officials grateful for early spring

The Second Circuit's recent decision in Connecticut v. AEP, in which a coalition of state attorneys general sued electric power producers to cap and then reduce their carbon emissions, allows the public nuisance case to proceed and gave the environmental plaintiffs virtually everything they wanted. It should also give pause to those of us tempted to see judges as purely political: it was decided by Judges Peter W. Hall, a George W. Bush appointee from Vermont, and Joseph McLaughlin, a George H.W. Bush appointee from New York. Damn liberals. (The third panel member, one Sonia Sotomayor, is now busy with other things and did not sign the decision.).

A few aspects of the case stand out (aside from the obviously correct decision that a common-law tort suit is not a nonjusticiable political question). Most importantly, the Court's holding on "displacement," i.e. whether the Clean Air Act "displaces" the common law suit, actually makes EPA regulations somewhat more likely.

1) The case jumps out for a very expansive ruling on "standing," i.e., which parties can bring suit. The Second Circuit held not only that states can bring climate change lawsuits (pretty much a slam dunk after Massachusetts v. EPA), but so can municipalities, and even private nonprofits. This is waving a red flag in front of the bull that is Chief Justice John Roberts.

2) The Court held that the suit is properly brought under federal, not state, common law. I have argued that this is a bad idea, because it essentially tells one federal district judge to take large swathes of the power grid into receivership. (My view is that the best tack is to make it a matter of state common law, with individual state Supreme Courts deciding on damages). Ruling this way on the federal v. state question means that lawsuits against automakers, which would have been pre-empted if the case was based on state law, can now go ahead. California's own lawsuit against the automakers was settled, but other plaintiffs will, like California's Governor, be bock.

3) By holding that the nuisance claims came under federal law, it had to determine whether the Clean Air Act "displaces" federal common law, thereby making it a dead letter. Dicta in previous decisions suggest that it is far easier for federal law to displace federal common law than it is for the same statutes to pre-empt state law, but there is also contrary dicta, and the Second Circuit used the latter to hold that there was no displacement.

But wait a minute, you might say: didn't the Supreme Court already hold in Massachusetts v. EPA that EPA has the authority to regulate carbon dioxide? And hasn't Obama's EPA already proposed finding that carbon dioxide is a threat to human health?

No matter, replied the Second Circuit: the finding is only "proposed" and in any event, the EPA's regulation only applies to mobile sources, not stationary sources like power plants. Thus--and here is the kicker--until the EPA actually starts regulating all sources of carbon dioxide, the Court said that it can't really determine whether or not displacement has occurred.

This holding is potentially significant, because it can put polluters in a real bind. Their normal strategy is to tie up new regulations in the courts for several years--maybe until they can get a more friendly administration. But now, the Second Circuit has told them that the only way to get rid of the public nuisance lawsuit is to let those regulations go into effect. The judges have told the power companies to choose their poison.

To the extent that you think regulation is better than common-law remedies, you should like this posture. Had the Second Circuit just held that the Clean Air Act does not displace the common law, it would have given the power companies no incentive to back off challenging new EPA regulations. The Court has provided them with a sort of carrot to let the rulemaking process run its course. It's not as strong a carrot as one might like, because the Second Circuit hinted strongly that the Clean Air Act would not displace even if EPA begins to regulate. But it leaves open the possibility.

What now? It would be over-optimistic to claim that the decision will have an immediate impact. But it does help to ratchet up the pressure on those forces opposing federal climate change legislation.

Related Links:

Capturing the massive social benefits of fuel efficiency requires regulation

Time to Speak Out Against the Biggest Polluters

Why won’t Lisa Jackson/Nancy Sutley visit a mountaintop removal site?

Maine Republican Susan Collins, a longtime environmentalist who was endorsed by the League of Conservation Voters, successfully defended her Senate seat against a challenge from Democrat Tom Allen, who also has a strong green record. New Jersey Republican Rep. Chris Smith, another LCV endorsee, won his reelection race too. But another stalwart green Republican from the Northeast, Rep. Christopher Shays of Connecticut, lost his seat to Democrat Jim Himes.

Related Links:

Obama administration may (finally) offer greenhouse-gas targets

George Voinovich (R-Ohio) [UPDATED]

Al Franken (D-Minn.)

Related Links:

‘Copenhagen Diagnosis’ offers a grim update to the IPCC’s climate science

John McCain’s troubles are the world’s troubles

Make the kids pay: The economic effects of climate change on future generations

The Connecticut senate has unanimously passed a bill aimed at reducing greenhouse-gas emissions, becoming the fifth state to pass such legislation (after California, Hawaii, New Jersey, and Washington). The bill would require Connecticut to reduce emissions 10 percent below 1990 levels by 2020 and 80 percent below 2001 levels by 2050. If, as expected, Gov. Jodi Rell (R) signs it into law, state agencies will be required to track emissions and come up with strategies for reducing them. "We're making a better environment, and we're building a new green economy," says bill sponsor Sen. Edward Meyer (D). "What fun to have a double winner in this regard." Indeed.

Related Links:

Obama headed to Copenhagen, sets the bar for success

Obama going to Copenhagen

‘Copenhagen Diagnosis’ offers a grim update to the IPCC’s climate science

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission on Thursday approved a $700 million floating liquefied-natural-gas terminal to be built in the middle of Long Island Sound. The energy companies Shell and TransCanada are partners in the project, which is expected to supply 1.25 billion cubic feet of natural gas a day to New York and Connecticut -- enough to generate electricity for 4 million homes. Connecticut state officials and some environmentalists have been vocal opponents of the project, saying it would industrialize a popular recreation area and could become an attractive terrorist target. Connecticut's attorney general called the terminal an "environmental atrocity" and vowed to fight the feds' approval in court. The LNG terminal still needs approval from two New York state agencies to proceed.

Related Links:

Obama headed to Copenhagen, sets the bar for success

Obama going to Copenhagen

‘Copenhagen Diagnosis’ offers a grim update to the IPCC’s climate science

Connecticut has introduced new green-building regulations -- that apply to public and private construction projects costing $5 million or more. And that, children, is what we call "playing to stereotype."

Related Links:

Obama headed to Copenhagen, sets the bar for success

Obama going to Copenhagen

‘Copenhagen Diagnosis’ offers a grim update to the IPCC’s climate science

To many, swans are a picture of beauty and grace -- but to others, they're miscreants hell-bent on environmental destruction. In Connecticut, mute swans -- considered an invasive species -- can eat eight pounds of shoreline plants per day and, in the process, uproot an additional 20 pounds of vegetation. Their gluttony can disrupt ecosystems, displacing crabs, oysters, and native birds. Conservationists, including the state Audubon Society, are so concerned about the swans' impact that they're kickstarting a campaign to reduce the state's swan population. But if animal-rights activists have their way, the birds won't have a swan song anytime soon.

Related Links:

Obama headed to Copenhagen, sets the bar for success

Obama going to Copenhagen

‘Copenhagen Diagnosis’ offers a grim update to the IPCC’s climate science

Related Links:

Freeing the grid

Do we need nuclear and coal plants for baseload power?

Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.)

Progressives around the country cheered when Ned Lamont knocked out Sen. Joe Lieberman in Connecticut's Democratic primary last month, but some enviros held their applause.

Joe Lieberman.

Photo: Paul Morigi/ WireImage

Lieberman -- now running as an independent in an effort to hold onto his seat -- has, by most accounts, been a standout leader on environmental protection during his 18 years in the Senate. While longtime allies like John Kerry, Hillary Clinton, and fellow Connecticut Sen. Christopher Dodd are among the many high-profile Democrats backing Lamont, some leading greens are vowing not to leave Lieberman's side.

The League of Conservation Voters, which ranks Lieberman's lifetime voting record at 86 percent (one of the highest scores the group has tallied for a long-running congressional career), says it plans to stand by the endorsement of the senator it issued in March. "We've looked very carefully at his decision to run as an independent, and unanimously agreed to maintain our endorsement," said Tony Massaro, LCV's senior vice president for political affairs. "Not only do we support Sen. Lieberman, we've named him an environmental champion -- a title we give out very sparingly. His exceptional leadership should be supported no matter what party he belongs to."

The Sierra Club has not yet announced whether it will endorse Lieberman, but the group's spokesperson, David Willett, stressed that the senator's party affiliation will have no impact on the decision: "We endorse people, not parties."

Lieberman's name is best known in environmental circles in connection with the Climate Stewardship Act he initially introduced in 2003 with Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), reintroduced in 2005, and plans to continue pushing this fall. The first federal bill to propose a cap-and-trade program for greenhouse gases, the act would impose a limit on emissions and allow companies to meet that limit by buying and selling the right to pollute. Lieberman has been a staunch defender of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and a vocal critic of President Bush's environmental agenda. He helped draft the landmark 1990 Clean Air Act amendments, and last year cosponsored the bipartisan Vehicle and Fuel Choices for American Security Act, which would reduce U.S. oil consumption by 10 million barrels a day in the next 25 years.

In contrast, Lamont doesn't have much of an environmental record to point to -- largely because he doesn't have much of a political one. A well-heeled technology entrepreneur, Lamont's political experience consists of chairing the state investment advisory council and serving on a smattering of civic boards. Nevertheless, if elected, it's expected he would vote with the majority of fellow Dems for strong environmental protections. In fact, Lamont suggests on his campaign website that he would be a stronger green champion than his opponent, and criticizes Lieberman's support for the 2005 energy bill, "which features billions in subsidies to big oil and does little for conservation and energy efficiency." Lamont also claims he is serious about fighting global warming "in the arenas that really matter -- the courts and the federal government."

Lieberman's communications director, Dan Gerstein, argues that Lamont wouldn't have nearly as much sway on environmental policy as Lieberman, who has been a longtime member of the Environment and Public Works Committee and has played a high-profile role forging bipartisan support for environmental bills. "Lieberman has been both a leader and a key consensus builder on green issues," Gerstein said. "Without him, climate politics changes. The whole landscape of environmental policy changes. ... Joe Lieberman has been at the forefront of pretty much every effort to block the administration's rollbacks of environmental standards."

Lieberman seems to be leading in the race, but only slightly. Recent polls by the American Research Group and Rasmussen Reports show the senator with a slim two-point lead over Lamont, while a Zogby poll has Lieberman leading by 10 points. (Republican Alan Schlesinger -- who is playing a largely symbolic role and doesn't even have strong support from the party establishment -- pulled only 2 percent support in the Zogby poll.)

"I am a Democrat," Lieberman declared recently on CBS's Face the Nation. "Look at my voting record. I voted 90 percent of the time with the majority of Democrats in the United States Senate. But when I disagree, I'm going to have the courage of my convictions to say so."

The big point of disagreement, of course, is Lieberman's unwavering support of the Bush administration's war in Iraq and broader "war on terror"; it's the reason Lamont launched his challenge, and the reason so many Democratic voters have backed Lamont.

Some enviros argue that this issue alone renders moot Lieberman's impressive environmental track record. Says Adam Werbach, former president of the Sierra Club and prominent green activist, "Lieberman's party should be irrelevant if you're an environmental-issue voter. The big question is whether you believe the Iraq war is an 'environmental' issue. I do. For me, the Iraq war is a travesty -- ecological and otherwise -- that far outweighs Lieberman's stellar environmental record."

The Lieberman/Lamont contest raises questions about how closely aligned environmentalists are -- or should be -- with the Democratic Party.

The same issue has cropped up during the reelection campaign of Sen. Lincoln Chafee (R-R.I.), a moderate Republican who's widely seen as an environmental leader, and who's in serious danger of losing to Democratic challenger Sheldon Whitehouse (if he even survives a tough challenge in the Republican primary). The Sierra Club has endorsed Chafee, and for that the group recently got spanked by liberal New York Times columnist Paul Krugman: "If the Democrats gain only five rather than six Senate seats this November, Sen. James Inhofe [R-Okla.], who says that global warming is 'the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people,' will remain in his current position as chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. And if that happens, the Sierra Club may well bear some of the responsibility," Krugman wrote.

But a vote for Lieberman is a far cry from a vote for Chafee, who would prop up the anti-environment GOP leadership in Congress. Though Lieberman would be an independent, he would caucus with the Democrats, says Gerstein, his communications director, thereby helping the Democrats retake the Senate.

Lieberman's campaign could, however, inadvertently hobble Dems' chances in the House. Here's why: Connecticut has three Democratic candidates who have a decent chance of unseating the state's incumbent Republican representatives: Nancy Johnson, Christopher Shays, and Rob Simmons. As The New York Times reported this week, "Democratic officials say they expect Mr. Lieberman to campaign aggressively to win over Republican and unaffiliated voters. If he does, Democratic strategists say, he may well attract voters to the polls who are likely to support the state's three Republicans in Congress."

While some enviros argue that Johnson, Shays, and Simmons have been allies in important battles like the fight to protect the Arctic Refuge, their three contested seats represent one-fifth of the 15 seats Dems need to regain a majority in the House -- and to put the House agenda in the hands of Nancy Pelosi (D), who's got a respectable environmental track record, instead of Dennis Hastert (R), who doesn't.

Sierra Club Executive Director Carl Pope, though, argues that it's bad long-term strategy for environmentalists to align themselves with one party. "Our job is to reward conviction, applaud leadership, and promote progress made in cleaning up the air and water and in preserving our wild lands and wildlife -- no matter which side of the aisle we find it on," he wrote in his blog in response to Krugman's broadside.

Whether the Sierra Club will endorse Lieberman -- and whether that will help the senator win the fight of his life -- remains to be seen.

Related Links:

What Do Coal and Dirty Dorm Rooms Have in Common?

Toward a medically defensible energy policy

Another coal plant bites the dust

In the early 1990s, I knew a 10-year-old boy named Davy who had never been to Toys "R" Us. When I told his story, people would often respond to this part of his life with a sort of sentimental longing. "How wonderful that he has never been to that awful place," they'd say. Davy's lack of experience, however, was a marker not of his protected status, but of his deprivation.

Arriving at school barely able to keep his eyes open, Davy spent too many nights staying up late and caring for three younger siblings, one of them still in diapers. His mother was out most nights, and had a drug problem. There was often not enough to eat. The family had no car. Like many children, Davy had never been to Toys "R" Us because he was poor, because he was black, and because he was neglected.

The lap of luxury.

Photo: iStockphoto.

In my work as an anthropologist studying consumer issues, I have found it useful to think of the environment as more than air, land, and natural resources. Thinking about the consumer environment, from my perspective, requires also thinking about access to important resources: transportation, education, food, shelter, and increasingly, technology. The consumer environment also includes accessibility of businesses and services, whether social, medical, artistic, or electronic. This approach does not utterly ignore more traditionally defined environmental issues, but my aim is to contextualize choices and options in ways that can account for poverty as well as abundance -- and to explore how those two extremes are connected.

Davy lived in the Newhallville neighborhood of New Haven, Conn., not a quarter mile away from the richest neighborhood in town. While his was a cubbyhole apartment carved out of what had once been a single-family home, the mansions lining the adjacent neighborhood's tree-lined streets were three-story affairs, with servants' quarters and multiple kitchens. The elegant simplicity on display at holiday time in that wealthy neighborhood -- a single lighted candle, perhaps, in each of a stately home's windows -- neatly encapsulated the way wealth aspires to spurn its own involvement in hyper-consumption. To me, it represented a great divide: simple living versus simply surviving.

Simplifying, for the wealthy, has become a task, a burden, an end in itself. (When I say "the wealthy," I mean nearly every citizen of every wealthy nation.) For so many people in wealthy worlds, simplifying has also become an industry which, ironically, turns out an array of alluring products: toxin-free paint so wholesome it's known as "milk"; clothing woven from hemp fibers; even the fat, glossy magazine Real Simple. But conscious simplicity is not what it appears to be. After all, Thoreau's idyll at Walden Pond was made possible by the fact that someone else did his laundry. Which is to say: for most people, living simply is a luxury, and one that still ends up consuming a great deal -- whether new categories of goods, other people's labor, or both.

While the wealthy struggle to shovel out from under their possessions and prepossessions, the poor must struggle on a daily basis to acquire much of anything of value -- including flesh on their bones. This is most evident, perhaps, in places like Kenya or India or Brazil, where cadres of children scramble over mountains of garbage to find bits and pieces from which they can cobble together the stuff of life. In the U.S., poverty is usually not quite so nightmarishly stark, or indeed so visible. Still, with the official poverty level at a yearly income of $19,307 for a family of four, the environmental problems facing the poor in the United States are vast -- and they don't have much to do with managing the stresses of overabundance.

What is abundantly clear is that for the poor, access to most resources is limited at best, the result of a combination of financial limits and larger social disinvestment. While wealthier households struggle to balance schedules overloaded with activities and commitments, the poor often spend an inordinate amount of time negotiating basic needs. The limited nature of their consumer environment means that everyday tasks take much longer, and usually end up costing more. Given that low-income neighborhoods are unlikely to house large supermarkets, consumers are faced either with buying higher-priced and often lower-quality goods in local markets, or figuring out some way to travel the miles to the supermarket and back, often with kids in tow. Imagine grocery shopping for a family of four using only a bus or train. Distances become exponentially more important when relying on public transportation's service schedules, routes, holidays, and glitches. (Interestingly, while contributing far less than "their share" to problems like automobile emissions, the poor model at least one portion of a solution, being the large bulk of public-transportation users. What they teach all of us, however, is that it is impossible to rely on public transportation and manage, as many well-off families do, to be in nearly three places almost simultaneously.)

Powerful folk beliefs in the United States portray the poor as profligate, undisciplined consumers. In fact, those who have carefully studied the day-to-day purchases and economic behavior of the poor know better, and the poor know best of all how carefully their resources are managed, bartered, exchanged. Without access to the supersized reservoirs of credit that the middle class can amass through both property and little plastic cards, the poor are often laid flat by large expenses: a refrigerator, a car, a hospital stay. Savings accounts, retirement funds, mad money -- these are not options, not so much because the poor are incapable of thinking about these things, but because, as one anthropologist described it, "there's a lot of month left at the end of the money."

Simple gifts.

Photo: iStockphoto.

Consider this: many poor children have never had the opportunity to purchase a gift for a loved one. Whatever conflicts the affluent might feel about rampant consumerism, it is worth wondering whether -- and how -- something so seemingly simple as being able to buy your mother a present for Mother's Day might also be a powerful moment of self-actualization. The power to buy is, in this society, inevitably and fundamentally, the power to be.

As I sit at my kitchen table with my own daughter, a girl whom I urge to fashion homemade valentines and who loves to make biscuits from scratch, I am keenly aware that my sense of too-muchness is itself a sign of my privilege and my wealth -- even if, like many, I experience this wealth as loss and emptiness. I am aware that the array of choices before me is itself a form of excess, of extravagance.

All around my modest Los Angeles neighborhood, poorer families than mine have collectively joined together to purchase their first homes, counting entire extended-family incomes in order to buy 1,200-square-foot houses whose median prices have topped the half-million dollar mark. Though we live side by side in this land-of-plenty, post-war neighborhood, the consumer environments we inhabit are worlds apart. Strapped for both space and funds, many families illegally transform their garages into living spaces, to earn a little rent or make them available for still other family members. Without proper ventilation and heat, these makeshift cottages are at best uncomfortable. Because many do not have rear exits, they can also be death traps. Every so often we hear about a space heater sparking a fire from which too many people were unable to escape.

I once heard it said that the United States is the wealthiest nation on the globe and in all of human history. Our history, as Americans, is one where swaths of ancient forests were stripped for timber and replaced by mirage-like forests of choices -- forests through which many of us wander in the hopes of finding a clearing, space to breathe without choking. Perhaps we ought better to seek to uproot these trees.

Changing the world is a pretty tall order. Me, I tend to take small actions. I wrote about Davy in a book that examined his life and the lives of his fifth-grade class. My choice has been to donate that book's royalties to the New Haven Scholarship Fund, a very small organization that gives very small scholarships to children graduating from New Haven's notoriously rotten public schools. To combat an environment that gives me too many choices to count, I try to fight -- not so much by changing all my choices, but by helping to make choices available to those who have too few.

Related Links:

Chuck Norris on Copenhagen

Obama administration may (finally) offer greenhouse-gas targets

The Climate Post: You heard it here first—Copenhagen a success

Wal-Mart settles with Connecticut over environmental misdeeds

Wal-Mart has agreed to pay Connecticut a $1.15 million fine for a host of environmental violations. State regulators first filed suit against the retail giant in 2001, after discovering that the company had improperly stored pesticides, fertilizers, and other hazardous materials outside, where they washed down storm drains to pollute rivers and streams after heavy rains. Then they amended the suit in 2003, when even more eco-misdeeds were discovered. Violations were ultimately documented at 22 out of 33 company operations in the state. "There is a pattern of national disregard by Wal-Mart in this area," said Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal. The company last year shelled out $3.1 million to settle a federal suit over storm-drain pollution in Tennessee, Utah, and several other states. Wal-Mart says it's already corrected most of the problems and intends to fully comply with state regulations, but Blumenthal is skeptical. "Wal-Mart's environmental record here seems as low as its prices," he said.

Related Links:

Obama headed to Copenhagen, sets the bar for success

Obama going to Copenhagen

‘Copenhagen Diagnosis’ offers a grim update to the IPCC’s climate science

Connecticut Hospital Adopts Green Cleaning Regime

Surgery patients and birthing mothers in Greenwich, Conn., will no longer be assaulted by that "hospital smell" in most parts of Greenwich Hospital now that the facility has made a switch to using eco-friendly cleaning products. The hospital is thought to be among the first in the U.S. to reject harsh chemicals in favor of equally effective but more environmentally benign cleaning products. Other hospitals around the country are considering a similar shift, said Cecilia DeLoash of Washington, D.C.-based Hospitals for a Healthy Environment. Anthony Como, Greenwich Hospital's director of hospitality services, predicts that the new cleaning scheme will cut down on eye and nose irritation and respiratory problems that were caused by harsh cleaning agents and will enable employees to be more efficient "because we're not being chased out by the smell."

Related Links:

Ask Umbra on trash, toxics, and tots

Toxic suds want to watch you shower

Top 25 reasons to give a damn about climate change

Connecticut, Maine, and Massachusetts sued the federal government yesterday to force it to regulate carbon dioxide emissions. The lawsuit, which alleges that the emissions fuel global warming and should therefore be governed by the Clean Air Act, marks the first time a state has sued the government to force it to take action on climate change. The three states want to see CO2 classified as a "criteria pollutant" under the act, which would oblige the U.S. EPA to set allowable atmospheric levels, as it currently does for ozone, lead, sulfur dioxide, and other forms of pollution. The states' argument turns on the definition of a "pollutant," with the lawyers arguing that although CO2 does not pose a direct threat to human health, the long-term dangers of climate change make the emissions at least as hazardous as, say, smog. So far, the EPA has declined to comment on the suit.

Related Links:

Climate Denial Crock of the Week: The big mist take

Capturing the massive social benefits of fuel efficiency requires regulation

Obama administration may (finally) offer greenhouse-gas targets

Massachusetts, Maine, and Connecticut will sue the U.S. EPA for violating clean air laws and imperiling the health of citizens by failing to regulate carbon dioxide emissions, the states' attorneys general announced yesterday. In a first-of-its-kind lawsuit, the attorneys general will argue that CO2 emissions from burning fossil fuels should be regulated under the Clean Air Act because such emissions are the leading cause of global climate change. The states have a pressing interest in such regulation because climate change "will likely cause or contribute to wide-ranging, adverse changes to just about every aspect of the environment, public health, and welfare throughout the Northeast," according to a letter sent to EPA Administrator Christie Whitman announcing the intent to sue. If the states win their lawsuit, the EPA would be forced to set standards for CO2 emissions, probably by tightening regulations on power plants -- a move the Bush administration has refused to make to date.

Related Links:

Chuck Norris on Copenhagen

Capturing the massive social benefits of fuel efficiency requires regulation

Ask Umbra on trash, toxics, and tots