With its rollback of a bedrock scientific finding on the public health impact of greenhouse gases, the Trump administration has undermined its own legal attack against state climate laws, a coalition of environmental groups argued Friday in court.
The groups’ filing in federal court in Vermont comes as the Trump administration is peeling back the federal government’s work on climate change while simultaneously trying to block state action on the issue. Those actions include “climate Superfund” laws in Vermont and New York that require companies to pay for the impact of greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels they previously sold.
EPA’s recent endangerment finding repeal made it administration policy that the Clean Air Act gives the agency no authority “at all” to regulate emissions from vehicles, and that rulemaking was “silent” about authority over other sources, wrote the Conservation Law Foundation and other groups intervening in the case to help defend Vermont’s law.
The administration can’t claim EPA’s statutory authority to regulate greenhouse gases preempts the ability of Vermont and other states to operate climate Superfund programs, while also disavowing its own statutory authority for regulating the biggest source of greenhouse gases in the country, the groups argued.
