Attorney General Jerry Brown is
suing the federal EPA again, this time for ignoring California’s pleas to
regulate greenhouse gas emissions from ships, airplanes and industrial
equipment.
Brown is scheduled to host a press
gaggle Thursday morning in Long
Beach to tout his lawsuit, which he insists was brought
about by the EPA’s failure to answer any of his three petitions for regulatory
help stemming back to October 2007. Brown in a statement called “pathetically weak”
an EPA “advanced notice of rulemaking” published on July
11.
“The EPA’s proposal contains
hundreds of pages of discussion and facts but never once states that greenhouse
gases endanger public health or welfare -- the legal foundation for fashioning
regulations,” Brown, a potential candidate for governor in 2010, said in a
prepared statement.
Brown already sued the EPA in December
2007 after it denied California’s request to impose new rules on
greenhouse gas emissions from cars.
EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson
said earlier this month that it would be too cumbersome to try to regulate
greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act and urged Congress to draft new
regulations – effectively punting the issue to the next presidential
administration. Which begs the question: Given the proverbial slow-turning
wheels of justice, why doesn’t Brown just wait six months until a new, almost
assuredly more receptive president is sworn into office? No doubt Brown will be
asked that very question Thursday morning.
— Cheryl Miller
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