by Jean Chemnick
E&E News
Conservative backers of the Trump administration’s climate deregulation push say they worry that delayed rulemaking and faulty lawyering may harm efforts to end greenhouse gas regulation.
Right-wing advocates including Steve Milloy and Myron Ebell, both of whom served on President Donald Trump’s first-term transition team, said in interviews Tuesday that they were particularly concerned about a recent Department of Justice brief that appeared to contradict EPA’s repeal of the so-called endangerment finding for greenhouse gas emissions.
In a May 21 amicus brief in Suncor v. Boulder — an important climate case the Supreme Court will decide next term — DOJ argued that the Clean Air Act reserves to EPA the authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. The administration is joining red states and industry groups in urging the court to block local governments such as Boulder, Colorado, from suing fossil fuel producers over their contribution to climate change…
Milloy, a senior policy fellow at the Energy and Environment Legal Institute, told POLITICO’S E&E News that the arguments DOJ made to demonstrate federal preemption of state and local climate action are “the exact opposite” of what EPA argued in its February repeal of the 2009 scientific finding that underpinned most Clean Air Act climate regulation.
“They could both wind up at the Supreme Court, and the court could say, ‘Justice Department, you’re on both sides of this issue,’” said Milloy.
In a thread on the social media site X over the weekend, Milloy argued that DOJ’s Suncor brief “threatens a successful defense” of EPA’s endangerment repeal because that rollback rests on an assertion that the agency “does not have the requisite legal authority to regulate greenhouse gases.”
