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Recentering Environmental Law: A Thought Experiment

Legal Planet

We thought that the key to reducing air pollution was to require better pollution control devices. Instead, we would have understood that the root problem was the burning of fossil fuels in the first place. We would have started pumping money into renewable energy research.

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Danger Season Underscores Need for Strong EPA Power Plant Carbon Standards

Union of Concerned Scientists

The destruction we see today is a direct result of decades of dependence on fossil fuels, enabled by decades of deception and obstruction on the part of the fossil fuel industry, and prolonged by decades of inaction on the part of policymakers who have been in their thrall.

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EPA’s Power Plant Carbon Rules Are Critical—and Complex. Here’s What to Know, and What to Watch.

Union of Concerned Scientists

All across the country, coal- and gas-fired power plants are still running, still polluting, and still showing signs of staying relentlessly online. Through the Clean Air Act , and as affirmed—and reaffirmed—through multiple legal sagas, EPA is statutorily obligated to address carbon pollution from fossil fuel-fired power plants.

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Ask a Scientist: Top Takeaways from the New EPA Carbon Pollution Rules

Union of Concerned Scientists

Given the EPA has the responsibility and the obligation to address carbon pollution, these standards—the first to limit carbon emissions from existing coal- and gas-fired power plants—are long overdue. Those currently operating fossil fuel plants generate 25 percent of U.S. EPA Supreme Court decision in 2022.

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Defending EPA’s Authority to Fight Climate Change – at the Supreme Court

Legal Planet

EPA in defense of EPA’s authority to effectively regulate greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act. Our client is Tom Jorling, a former Senate staffer and EPA official who was directly involved in drafting the Act in 1970. (We The Clean Power Plan never went into effect.

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Sabin Center Files Amicus Brief in Support of New GHG Vehicle Emissions Standards

Law Columbia

EPA , the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has regulated greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from motor vehicles under the Clean Air Act. In 2022, Texas, along with several other states and industry groups representing fuel manufacturers (together, Petitioners), challenged EPA’s new emissions standards in court.

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Cities & the Inflation Reduction Act

Law Columbia

On August 16, President Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act (or “IRA”), widely hailed as the most ambitious piece of climate legislation in U.S. The bill also has healthcare and prescription drug provisions, makes tax code changes unrelated to climate and energy, and guarantees federal land on- and offshore for oil and gas drilling.)

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