{"id":20325,"date":"2014-06-12T10:19:26","date_gmt":"2014-06-12T15:19:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/?p=20325"},"modified":"2014-06-12T10:22:20","modified_gmt":"2014-06-12T15:22:20","slug":"court-losses-wont-deter-attorney-general-scott-pruitt-in-his-fight-with-the-epa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/2014\/06\/12\/court-losses-wont-deter-attorney-general-scott-pruitt-in-his-fight-with-the-epa\/","title":{"rendered":"Court Losses Won’t Deter Attorney General Scott Pruitt In His Fight With The EPA"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"06112014-EPAEntrance001_WEB\"<\/a><\/p>\n

c_nilsen \/ Flickr<\/p>\n<\/div>

When the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency last week proposed new rules<\/a> to cut carbon emissions by 30 percent, Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt \u2014 predictably \u2014 blasted the plan<\/a> as another example of federal overreach in the Obama Administration\u2019s war on fossil fuels.<\/p>

And the same day the EPA announced its CO2 emission goal, Pruitt was already making a case for litigation over it.<\/p>

\u201cThe EPA can\u2019t force utility companies to actually incorporate emission control measures unless they\u2019re achievable through technology,\u201d Pruitt tells StateImpact. \u201cAnd here, there really isn\u2019t any demonstrated technology that will see a reduction of 30 percent.\u201d<\/p>

<\/p>

For him, this is just the Obama Administration\u2019s latest salvo against utilities and the coal industry that tramples on states\u2019 rights.<\/p>

\u201cYou know, this is coerced conservation, in effect,\u201d Pruitt says. \u201cThis is the administration saying \u2018we\u2019re going to penalize fossil fuels. We\u2019re going to emphasize renewables, cause energy costs to skyrocket.\u2019<\/p>

Of course, this is far from the first time Pruitt is crying foul about federal overreach, or maybe he\u2019s crying wolf.<\/p>

\u201cOff the top of my head, I can\u2019t think of a time, recently, when Oklahoma has been successful in taking the EPA to court,\u201d Whitney Pearson with the Sierra Club\u2019s Beyond Coal Campaign in Oklahoma says.<\/p>

She tries to remember all the times Pruitt has sued the EPA since taking office in 2011.<\/p>

\u201cLike, the cross-state air pollution rule<\/a>, which they were not successful on, the mercury and air toxics protections<\/a> that they were also not successful on, and then regional haze,\u201d Pearson says.<\/p>

The U.S. Supreme Court in May decided not to hear <\/a>Oklahoma\u2019s challenge to the regional haze rule. The state has also joined other states\u2019 lawsuits against the EPA, like in the yet-to-be-decided Texas vs. EPA case<\/a> over the federal agency\u2019s authority to regulate greenhouse gasses. Pruitt has also sued EPA for being sued<\/a> \u2014 by environmental groups like the Sierra Club.<\/p>

\u201cThey\u2019re getting sued \u2014 it\u2019s almost a wink-wink kind of thing,\u201d Pruitt says. \u201c\u2018You sue us. We\u2019ll agree to a settlement. And in that settlement, we\u2019ll agree to obligations that aren\u2019t in the statute, and we\u2019ll regulate that way.\u2019\u201d<\/p>

He\u2019s still asking for documents from the EPA related to his \u2018sue and settle\u2019 claims, but the lawsuit he filed to get them was dismissed late last year.<\/a><\/p>

Some cases are pending. Some Pruitt lost. But notice there are, so far, no wins in that list of cases. University of Texas environmental law professor Thomas McGarity explains why:<\/p>

\u201cHow the courts tend to come out \u2014 though not always \u2014 is to defer to EPA on these matters of scientific judgment,\u201d McGarity says.<\/p>

But Pruitt says fighting these court battles is worth the effort even if he doesn\u2019t win. Take the regional haze case:<\/p>

\u201cThe court put a stay in place, preventing our utility companies from having to spend two-plus billion dollars,\u201d Pruitt says. \u201cThat saved us three years of costs, and oh by the way I think led to some alternative plans that were perhaps more accommodating.\u201d<\/p>

McGarity, who\u2019s also with the Center for Progressive Reform<\/a> and used to work for the EPA, says things haven\u2019t always worked like this. Congress<\/i> used to vote for new environmental regulations.<\/p>

\u201cBack in the early days there were Republicans that were strong environmentalists. There were Republicans that wrote the Clean Air Act,\u201d McGarity says.<\/p>

In fact, in 1990, Oklahoma sued the EPA<\/a> for not regulating pollution in the Illinois River enough<\/i>. But McGarity says, now, the environment has become a political issue, and more proof will be in the coming lawsuits against the new carbon rule.<\/p>

\u201cEPA is going to have to really hustle to get a final rule on the books before the end of the Obama Administration,\u201d McGarity says.<\/p>

That\u2019s the thing about using executive power. A new executive can come in and undo whatever the previous one did. So maybe Pruitt and other like-minded attorneys general in other states can just run out the clock on Obama.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The same day the EPA announced its CO2 emission goal, Pruitt was already making a case for litigation over it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":42,"featured_media":20334,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[491],"tags":[554,549,532,499],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20325"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/42"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20325"}],"version-history":[{"count":27,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20325\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20355,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20325\/revisions\/20355"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20334"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20325"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20325"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20325"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}