On Aug. 21, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit threw out one of the Obama administration’s landmark environmental regulations. In a 2-1 opinion, the court struck down the Cross-State Air Pollution Rule on the grounds that the Environmental Protection Agency had overstepped its authority in curbing emissions too sharply. Besides resting on questionable legal ground, the decision will have a catastrophic effect on the health and wellbeing of millions of Americans, opening the door for willful polluters to harm public health.
The Cross-State Air Pollution Rule established uniform anti-pollution penalties at the federal level, in an attempt to make up for discrepancies in state-by-state regulation. The rule would have imposed harsher penalties on industries whose pollution travels across state lines—forming smog and acid rain in states that do not have any authority over the offending industry. It also would have established a limited cap-and-trade system to allow utilities companies to buy and sell pollution credits.
The EPA estimates curbing pollutants like nitrogen oxide, sulfur oxide, and particulate matter under the rule would have saved between 13,000 and 34,000 lives, prevented around 420,000 respiratory problems and, in all, yield health benefits for 240 million people each year. The agency reports that within two years, this and other regulations would reduce sulfur dioxide emissions by 73 percent and nitrogen oxide levels by 54 percent, as compared to 2005 levels. These benefits clearly outweigh the perceived cost of the regulations, which would be levied upon dirty industries which our nation should phase out anyway.
Perhaps as troubling as the health impacts are the shoddy legal argument upon which this ruling hinges. The Clean Air Act clearly gives the EPA authority to determine appropriate levels of air pollution and regulate accordingly. That is exactly what the agency did here. However, the court ruled that this latest regulation overstepped the bounds of the Clean Air Act. Obviously, the two George W. Bush appointees who overturned the rule put their personal political views ahead of jurisprudence.
Their legal opinion reads more like an amicus brief for the coal industry than a court document, and it reeks of unsubstantiated, pro-state’s rights sentiment. Judge Judith Roberts, who penned the dissent, wrote that the opinion will result in “a redesign of Congress’s vision of cooperative federalism between the States and the federal government in implementing the [Clean Air Act] based on the court’s own notions of absurdity and logic that are unsupported by a factual record.”
Even with this defeat, Lisa Jackson’s EPA has been perhaps the most effective and progressive agency in the Obama administration. It must maintain its pro-public attitude as it fights through the appeals process and designs new rules to protect both citizens and the environment.
