Jul 12 2008
N.C., Duke Energy Win Air Pollution Suit
A federal appeals court – ruling Friday on a challenge from North Carolina and electric utilities including Duke Energy – struck down a high-profile Bush administration rule on interstate air pollution.
The ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit disappointed environmental groups, a rare ally of the administration, and likely delayed further action until a new president takes office.
The court ruled that the Environmental Protection Agency overstepped its authority by instituting the clean-air rule. Citing “more than several fatal flaws,” the court scrapped the entire regulation.
I am not opposed to environmental regulations in general. We don’t want to become Beijing, but they also need to be reasonable. I think there are far too many environmental restrictions across this nation that are senseless and based more on environmentally religious folklore than fact. All of these restrictions, sensible or not, pass on the added costs on energy companies to the consumer, hurting the poorest households the most. Then the government turns around and doles out tax dollars in the form of welfare to help these people pay their bill, thus taking even more money out of the pocket of the middle class. It’s a domino effect.
Of course, this suit wasn’t entirely challenging over regulation, but rather a provision in the Clean Air Interstate Rule that allowed a Cap and Trade policy. The State of North Carolina felt there were too many loopholes, while Duke Energy felt they weren’t receiving their appropriate number of allowances.
“Literally hundreds if not thousands of people in North Carolina could die prematurely unless the government takes swift and decisive action to clean up power plants emissions,” said June Blotnick, executive director of Charlotte’s Carolinas Clean Air Coalition.
The EPA said the rule would have dramatically reduced sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide emissions, saving up to $100billion in health benefits. Besides the reduction in premature deaths, the EPA also said the rule would have prevented millions of lost work and school days and tens of thousands of nonfatal heart attacks.
These are some astounding claims that I would like to get more information on. I have written the Carolinas Clean Air Coalition requesting some of this information so we’ll see if they respond.
[...] few days ago I wrote about the lawsuit won by Duke Energy and the State of North Carolina over a cap and trade provision in the Clean Air [...]