U.S. states rebel against Obama's 'war on coal'

NEW YORK – Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin is leading a state rebellion against the Obama administration’s effort to impose on states the Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Power Plan to limit carbon-dioxide emissions from power plants burning fossil fuels.

Earlier this month, Fallin vetoed a bill in the Oklahoma legislature that would have required the state to develop a State Implementation Plan, SIP, to comply with EPA proposed rules mandating a 30 percent reduction in carbon dioxide emissions from power plants. The proposal arises from the Obama administration’s continued insistence that anthropogenic, or human-caused, climate change is a serious threat to U.S. national security.

There is growing resistance by states to the Clean Power Plan, or CPP, regulations issued by the EPA in response to President Obama’s June 2, 2014, executive orders. It's virtually certain several states will unite in seeking a federal district court injunction once the EPA formally publishes the new rules by next month.

States such as Oklahoma are determined to challenge Obama’s use of the 1970 Clean Air Act to justify his administration's “war on coal."

In open defiance of federal authority to regulate Oklahoma’s energy policy, Fallin signed Executive Order 2015-22 on April 28, prohibiting the Oklahoma Department of Environmental Quality from submitting to the EPA a plan specifying how the state will comply with final rules regarding the operation of state power plants.

Charging that Obama’s executive order and the resulting EPA CPP regulations exceed the authority of the federal government under the Clean Air Act to regulate carbon dioxide, Fallin is setting up a classic federal-state constitutional crisis that has the prospect of advancing to the Supreme Court for final resolution.

“EPA has historically interpreted its authority under the Clean Air Act as only being able to regulate emissions from power plants,” Fallin’s executive order reads. “However the proposed regulations seek to go beyond that traditional authority and regulate all aspects of state energy systems.”

Texas looks certain to join Oklahoma in a legal challenge once the EPA promulgates final regulations to force states to limit carbon-dioxide emissions from fossil fuel-burning power plants.

On May 7, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott met in Washington with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Texas Republican Sens. John Cornyn and Ted Cruz to discuss the EPA’s proposed CPP plan.

“The EPA’s latest attempt at imposing burdensome regulations represents an unprecedented meddling with Texas in order to push the Obama Administration's liberal climate change agenda,” Abbott said after the meeting. “The EPA's newest suite of rules, led by the Clean Power Plan, seeks unprecedented control over the State's energy mix that will certainly result in higher energy prices for Texans and will threaten the reliability of Texas' electric grid.”

Abbott said that during his conversation with McConnell, he "expressed grave concerns that the EPA’s proposed action will burden Texas far more than any other state, killing jobs and stagnating Texas' unprecedented economic growth, and I offered my full support for his efforts to fight this federal government overreach."

On March 19, McConnell wrote a letter to the National Governors Association expressing his opposition to the EPA’s Clean Power Plan.

“The EPA’s stated rationale for attempting to shut down America’s coal-fired power plants is to combat global climate change,” McConnell wrote. "Yet, this costly effort is largely symbolic unless and until other major nations impose similar requirements on their own economies.

“Even then, the EPA admits that the 'climate' benefits of the CPP cannot be quantified and has refused to estimate the impact it would have on global temperature or sea levels,” McConnell stressed.

While Abbott was in Washington, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced the state intends to mount a legal challenge to the final EPA rules.

The Texas Public Policy Foundation, TPPF, applauded Paxton’s announcement, with Distinguished Senior Fellow-in-Residence and Director of the Armstrong Center for Energy and the Environment Kathleen Hartnett White joining the foundation’s Fueling Freedom Project Director Doug Domenech in issuing statements applauding Paxton’s announcement.

“The EPA’s attempt to commandeer state governments to mandate what the EPA itself has no authority to mandate should be resisted as soon as possible on every level,” White said. “Hopefully, federal courts will stop the clock on the EPA’s impossible timelines until full judicial review is complete.”

“Recent Supreme Court decisions suggest that the EPA’s most ambitious overreach in this Clean Power Plan rule will be overturned,” White said. “As the Supreme Court recently noted, the high court frowns upon EPA’s discovery of elephants in a statutory mouse holes.”

“The attorney general is right,” said Domenech. “The consequences of the EPA's unconstitutional plan will be devastating to the Texas economy and to the pocket books of every Texas family."

White, in a TPFF-published paper titled “The Facts About the Clean Power Plan,” dated April 2015, argued the EPA was attempting to nationalize each state’s electric-power sector, much as the federal government under Obama “has nationalized the health care system through Obamacare and national banks through Dodd Frank.”

“The total amount of CO2 emissions that the EPA hopes to gain across the country by 2030 would be emitted by China in less than two weeks,” she continued. “Over half of Texas’ coal fired plants will be forced to close under CPP. That is anywhere from 19-25 plants.”

“The EPA’s Clean Power plan rule would destroy the Texas competitive electricity market and make carbon content – not price, reliability or safety – the first priority for dispatch of electric power to the grid,” she said.

Thomas K. Lindsay, the director of the Centers for Tenth Amendment Action and Higher Education at the TPPF, writing in RealClearPolitics.com, noted that opposition to the EPA’s plan is shaping up in 32 states, where legislatures, governors and/or attorneys general have expressed opposition.

“Across the country, a storm is rising in opposition to federal overreach,” Lindsay wrote. “This opposition will succeed if states continue to once again "act like" states, taking it upon themselves to reclaim our Constitution and, with it, our liberties.”