Recent headlines about the Environmental Protection Agency’s “endangerment finding” and the challenges it faces could be confusing to many a reader because of all the parties involved.Attorneys general of 25 states filed suit, requesting intervenor status, to uphold the current EPA’s move to scrap what is called the “endangerment finding” by former President Barack Obama’s EPA. In short order, 24 states and a handful of cities filed suit on the other side in March. This came in addition to a lawsuit already filed by environmental groups to challenge the current EPA’s move and to reinstate the original 2009 finding.The agency’s findings had been that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases pose a danger to public health and general welfare under the Clean Air Act. If that finding goes away, then a “key part of the federal government’s legal authority to regulate emissions from vehicles, power plants, and other sources could soon disappear,” explained Stanford University’s Woods Institute for the Environment, in a news release.
Moreover, it might not be easy to rebottle that genie. A few Supreme Court rulings have likely made it more difficult to issue a similar finding again, absent specific instructions from Congress. And Congress seems pretty gridlocked on many environmental issues.State attorneys general on the national stage
