Obama Administration Readies Big Push on Climate Change By Amy Harder
http://www.wsj.com/articles/obama-administration-readies-big-push-on-climate-change-1433873269?mod=trending_now_1
Proposals to curb emissions from trucks, airplanes, oil and natural-gas operations, and power plants
The Obama administration is planning a series of actions this summer to rein in greenhouse-gas emissions from wide swaths of the economy, including trucks, airplanes and power plants, kicking into high gear an ambitious climate agenda that the president sees as key to his legacy.
The Environmental Protection Agency is expected to announce as soon as Wednesday plans to regulate carbon emissions from airlines, and soon after that, draft rules to cut carbon emissions from big trucks, according to people familiar with the proposals. In the coming weeks, the EPA is also expected to unveil rules aimed at reducing emissions of methane—a potent greenhouse gas—from oil and natural-gas operations.
And in August, the agency will complete a suite of three regulations lowering carbon from the nation’s power plants—the centerpiece of President Barack Obama’s climate-change agenda.
The proposals represent the biggest climate push by the administration since 2009, when the House passed a national cap-and-trade system proposed by the White House aimed at reducing carbon emissions.
Anticipating the rules, some of which have been telegraphed in advance, opponents of Mr. Obama’s regulatory efforts are moving to block them. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.), is urging governors across the country to defy the EPA by not submitting plans to comply with its rule cutting power-plant emissions.
Nearly all Republicans and some Democrats representing states dependent on fossil fuels say the Obama administration is going beyond the boundary of the law and usurping the role of Congress by imposing regulations that amount to a national energy tax driven by ideological considerations.
“The Administration seems determined to double down on the type of deeply regressive regulatory policy we’ve already seen it try to impose on lower-and-middle-class families in every state,” Mr. McConnell said in a statement. “These Obama administration regulations share several things in common with the upcoming directives: they seem motivated more by ideology than science, and they’re likely to negatively affect the economy and hurt both the cost and reliability of energy for hard-working American families and small-business owners.”
Supporters of Mr. Obama’s efforts say the regulatory push has the backing of both science and the force of law. They cite a 2007 Supreme Court decision that compelled the EPA to regulate greenhouse-gas emissions if the agency found they endanger the public’s health and welfare, which the EPA did in 2009 with a scientific finding shortly after Mr. Obama became president.
They also argue that the moves became necessary after the Senate in 2010 rejected the administration proposal to cap the amount of carbon emitted in the U.S. Mr. Obama in 2013 issued an executive order directing the EPA to issue the regulations, which it did a year later, in June 2014.
“It’s a demonstration of his commitment. He tried one path, it wasn’t successful, so he took another path that was available,” said Carol Browner, Mr. Obama’s top climate adviser for the first two years of his administration and EPA administrator for President Bill Clinton. “He’s following the law Congress passed in 1990,” added Ms. Browner, referring to the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments.
The actions expected as soon as this week include a scientific finding concluding that carbon emissions from aircraft contribute to climate change, a move that legally prompts the requirement to regulate based on the 2007 ruling by the Supreme Court, and new carbon-emission standards for big trucks and trailers, such as a typical 18-wheeler semi-truck.
Two factors are driving the timing of the push this summer. The administration wants to complete it ahead of December’s United Nations summit on climate change, where world leaders will meet in Paris to decide whether to agree on a global accord to cut carbon emissions. The EPA’s regulatory agenda represents nearly everything Mr. Obama is set to offer world leaders on what the U.S. is doing to address climate change.
Secondly, once the EPA rules on emissions by power plants become final, states will have a year to submit plans while lawsuits challenging the rule are expected to be heard by the courts. The administration wants to make sure that its officials can oversee as much of these two developments as possible instead of relying on the next president, especially if it is one of the GOP White House candidates who have expressed opposition to the EPA’s climate agenda altogether.
“When you’re regulating as much of the economy as he [Mr. Obama] is attempting to regulate by executive order, that’s clearly an overreach,” said Tim Phillips, president of Americans for Prosperity, a political advocacy group backed by the wealthy Koch brothers.
People on either side of the fight hotly contest to what degree—or whether at all—the regulations will create new costs on the U.S. economy.
EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy has averaged about two speeches a week on climate change since the agency first proposed the carbon rule for power plants a little more than a year ago, according to EPA. Many of the speeches, which include addresses in front of oil and natural gas industry executives around the world, focus on what Ms. McCarthy describes as the positive economic impact of new regulation.
“Strategies to reduce carbon can double as investments that return value for your operations as they evolve over time,” Ms. McCarthy told an audience of energy executives at a conference in Houston in late April about the agency’s proposed rule cutting carbon from the utility sector.
Other experts maintain the economic upshots of regulations aren’t as clear-cut.
“There is no question that regulations are shifting supply and demand curves, so they are increasing costs,” said Susan Dudley, who was a top regulatory official in the White House during the George W. Bush administration. “Some of those costs are encouraging cleaner alternatives; sometimes they’re shifting things to other countries. Fully understanding the costs and benefits is really challenging.”
Corrections & Amplifications:
An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that Congress rejected cap-and-trade for carbon emissions in 2009. The House passed the measure in 2009 but the Senate rejected it in 2010. (June 9, 2015)
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