BY CHRIS RIZO | Legal Newsline
SALEM, Ore. The Bush administration has “refused to accept the reality” that greenhouse gas emissions are harming the environment, Oregon Attorney General Hardy Myers told Legal Newsline.
Myers said for that reason a group of five states, including Oregon, is suing the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency under the federal Clean Air Act to force the U.S. government to set emissions standards for planes, ships and off-road vehicles.
“I share the view that global warming is a very, very serious threat, and the unmistakable pattern that’s emerged under this administration is a refusal by the federal government to recognize that,” Myers said in a lengthy interview this week.
The legal action is an effort to force the federal government “to accept the reality of global warming and to act on it within the authority it has been given by Congress,” added Myers, a longtime attorney general and former state lawmaker.
In addition to not setting emissions standards for non-highway vehicles, the White House has also declined to set emissions standards for petroleum refineries and power plants, which nationally are the largest emitters of greenhouse gasses.
Myers, a Democrat, said he is hopeful that the next U.S. president will address the issue of global climate change more aggressively than the Bush White House has over the last eight years.
He noted that Republican presidential nominee Arizona Sen. John McCain and Democratic nominee Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois have both pledged to use federal authority to try to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases.
“But of course President George Bush in 2000 pledged to combat greenhouse gas emissions,” Myers said. “My sense is there is a fairly widespread perception that perhaps under either of the two candidates there would be a change in direction, but we’ll have to see.”
While lawsuits brought by states have not resulted in the sought-after regulations the complaints have at least cleared up some key legal issues, the attorney general said.
The EPA had argued in a case brought by the state of Massachusetts in 2007 that greenhouse gasses were not an air pollutant subject to potential control under the U.S. Clean Air Act.
Ultimately, the case resulted in a U.S. Supreme Court decision to the contrary. The nation’s highest court also ruled that the EPA could not refuse to exercise its authority over greenhouse gas emissions based on its policy preferences.
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