Fatalistic Friday: GOP Senator may protect polluters from greenhouse gas curbs

by Emily Gertz

categories: Fatalistic Friday, Fossil Energy, Greenhouse Gas, Policy & Legislation, Politics

Published September 18, 2009 @ 06:10PM PT

Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) wants to slice and dice the Environmental Protection Agency's authority to regulate greenhouse gas pollution. Cars and trucks: okay. Power plants and factories: not so much.

Murkowski has said she hopes to introduce an amendment to the $32.1 billion fiscal 2010 appropriations legislation for the Department of the Interior, the EPA, and the Forest Service (part of the Dept. of Agriculture).

Murkowski's rider would limit EPA to creating rules to regulate greenhouse gas pollution from mobile sources only -- that is, automobiles -- while preventing the agency from devising regulations for stationary sources like factories and power plants off-limits until after September, 2010:

Effective during the 1-year period beginning on the date of enactment of this Act, none of the funds made available for the Environmental Protection Agency under this Act may be expended to regulate or control carbon dioxide from any sources other than a mobile source as described in section 202(a) of the Clean Air Act or to treat carbon dioxide as a pollutant subject to regulation under the Clean Air Act except for purposes of section 10 202(a) of that Act.

Murkowski, the top-ranked Republican member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, is opposed to creating a cap-and-trade system for lowering greenhouse gas pollution. She supports drilling for oil and gas on the Outer Continental Shelf off Alaska's coast.

Under the Supreme Court's landmark 2007 decision in Massachusetts v. EPA, the court ordered the agency to review its authority to regulate greenhouse gas pollution under the Clean Air Act. The Bush administration, favoring automakers and utilities, had held that the CAA gave the agency no such authority, and dragged its heels on releasing the agency's formal endangerment finding. (How? By simply not opening the e-mail from EPA scientists containing the dread information that as the cause of global warming, human-propelled greenhouse gas emissions are a danger to public health and welfare, and thus pollutants under the Clean Air Act.)

The Obama administration released the endangerment finding on April 17, and the EPA is working on creating the regulations.

What are Murkowski's chances of getting this rider all the way to the president's desk?

Related links:

• Murkowski Seeks to Thwart EPA Regulation of Greenhouse Gases (The Washington Independent)
• Energy Industry Stall Tactic: Embrace EPA (The Washington Independent)
• GOP Senator Considering Rider to Limit EPA Authority on Greenhouse Gases (Climatewire)