POWIP Piece of Work In Progress

Administration: Let’s tweak that AGW law a little

The EPA is monstrous, and the administration wants to put it on steroids:

The administration, I suspect, does not want the Court to rule that the political question doctrine precludes tort litigation against CO2-emitters, because it wants the only solid, durable shield for industry to be the EPA’s “displacement” of common-law injury claims via the agency’s endangerment rule and ensuing regulatory cascade under the Clean Air Act (CAA).

In other words, just as the administration used the endangerment rule to try and spook Congress and industry into supporting cap and trade, it is now using CO2 tort litigation to try and spook them into supporting — or at least not aggressively attacking — EPA regulation of greenhouse gases via the Clean Air Act.

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The significance? This case is a very big deal: if litigators can sue large utilities for emitting CO2, they can also sue smaller utilities and manufacturers. Indeed, they can in principle sue anyone and everyone. Utilities, after all, only emit CO2 in the process of serving customers who use electricity. People lighting their homes, powering their factories, and running their laptops are ultimately to blame for destroying the planet, according to the “science” invoked by plaintiffs. In their worldview, everybody is injuring everybody else — which implies that everybody has standing to sue everybody else. Plaintiffs may preach “green peace,” but they sow the seeds of a war of all against all.

Welcome your new unelected masters, children.

Of course, the foregoing analysis assumes that Congress intended the CAA to be a statutory scheme for regulating greenhouse gases — exactly what opponents of EPA’s shocking power grab deny. The point, however, is that the Obama administration is attempting to manage rather than eliminate the threat of litigation chaos. The price we must pay for such “protection” — not spelled out but clear enough from the terms of Team Obama’s argument — is support for (or at least acceptance of) EPA’s Court-awarded authority to Kyotoize the economy.

That's exactly what it is: a protection racket. Government continues to arrogate powers away from us, because it's in our own best interests.

More President Thug-Boy policy in action:

Remember, you have a right to these overlords.

Dan Collins

Dan Collins is a dude who blogs. He used to blog elsewhere. Now he blogs here.

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