California Sues EPA In Order To… Protect the Environment?

Posted on December 22, 2007
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To most of us outside the United States the concept of an Environmental Protection Agency seems like a pretty obvious one: surely it must be an agency who’s mandate is to protect the environment, no? Alas more and more within the US it seems that the EPA has really just become a laughable example of NewSpeak in practice.

It’s sad that things have come to this in the States:

California’s law, which would require a 30% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2016, was passed in 2003, and it requested the Clean Air Act waiver it needed from the EPA in 2005. When the EPA rejected that lawsuit, California joined other states in a case that went to the Supreme Court, leading to a landmark decision this spring that stated that the EPA has the right and responsibility to regulate greenhouse gases as a pollutant under the Clean Air Act.
…
“California sued to compel the agency to act on our waiver, and now we will sue to overturn today’s decision and allow Californians to protect our environment,”

In other words, California and by extension “Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Utah, Vermont and Washington” are all suing the EPA to allow them to protect their environment as they see fit. Wtf?

Lest this be seen as America-bashing, rest assured Canada is not the least bit better under our current government which doesn’t even come close to the kinds of levels California is wishing to target:

…part of the Conservative government’s plan to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions by 20 per cent by 2020

It should be noted that that’s a 20% reduction from 2006 levels, not 1990 levels as California uses for its baseline. Alas Canada has no provinces willing to take such measures as California; my own province, British Columbia, is targeting these rather weak goals:

· by 2020 and for each subsequent calendar year, BC greenhouse gas emissions will be at least 33% less than the level of those emissions in 2007; and

· by 2050 and for each subsequent calendar year, BC greenhouse gas emissions will be at least 80% less than the level of those emissions in 2007

Oddly BC’s own Ministry of the Environment notes that emissions in BC will increase by 38%:

If current trends in British Columbia continue between 1990 and 2010, GHG emissions are expected to increase by 38%. This represents one of the largest expected increases in Canada, exceeded only by Alberta and Saskatchewan.

For some inexplicable reason this whole fiasco brings to mind this line from Serenity by Mr. Universe. I’m not sure why.

“Mal?.. He stabbed me with a sword, Mal. Isn’t that weird?”

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