Seventeen states and more than a dozen environmental groups filed a petition yesterday in federal appeals court in an effort to force the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to regulate greenhouse gas emissions produced by automobiles.
The petition was filed in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit exactly a year after the Supreme Court ordered the EPA to determine whether the emissions are a threat to human health or the environment, and if so, to regulate them.
The petition asserts that the agency has yet to move forward on the order, and asks the court to order the EPA to act within 60 days. The Supreme Court did not give the EPA a timeline in which to act.
Earlier this week EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson said the agency would act "later in the spring."
The environmental group Friends of the Earth called for Johnson’s resignation yesterday, saying he has "mismanaged the agency in a way that has been flatly inconsistent with its mission and has put the planet’s future at risk."
U.S. Democratic Senator Barbara Boxer, whose home state of California is one of the petitioners, said, "The Bush Administration was told to act on global warming by no less than the highest court in the land a year ago, and yet they still have failed to take the steps necessary to address this challenge. Once again we have to rely on the courts to ensure that EPA does its job, to protect the American people from the ravages of global warming."
U.S. Representative Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), announced the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, of which he is the chair, will vote to issue a subpoena for EPA documents showing the Agency’s progress in making the "endangerment" finding and proposing national emissions standards.
"Paper is the traditional one year anniversary gift. On this anniversary of Massachusetts v. EPA, we’re sending a piece of paper–a subpoena–to Stephen Johnson and the EPA," said Markey. "We’re trying to make sure this administration doesn’t run out the clock on their term without taking action to protect the climate."
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