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Friday, September 10, 2010

Courts - Still more on: "Kansas joins case to head off federal carbon regulation"

Supplementing Wednesday's ILB entry on the amicus brief filed by the Indiana AG in Connecticut v. AEP, and yesterday's ILB report that several other appeals are intertwined, the NY Times today has made available the Sept. 3rd amicus brief filed by Indiana Attorney General Zoeller. Access it here.

A story on the NY Times website posted last evening by Gabriel Nelson begins:

Challenging the appropriateness of using the courts to address climate change, Indiana and 11 other states are urging the Supreme Court to overturn an appeals court decision that would allow greenhouse gas emitters to be sued for their contribution to global warming.

The case, American Electric Power v. Connecticut, is headed to the Supreme Court this fall after the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decided last year that other states, including Connecticut and New York, had standing to sue coal-fired utilities for their share of the damage caused by climate change. * * *

The friend-of-the-court brief filed Friday by Indiana Attorney General Gregory Zoeller (R) neither supports nor opposes greenhouse gas regulations but argues that question should be left to the other two branches of government. With a cap-and-trade program on the table in Congress and U.S. EPA rolling out greenhouse gas regulations under the Clean Air Act, it is especially important that federal courts stay out of the issue, the brief says.

"Reasonable people disagree on many levels over the extent to which greenhouse gas emissions, and especially CO2 emissions, should be regulated. Given that every industry, and indeed every living mammal, constantly emits CO2, such emissions cannot simply be banned outright, no matter what the harm to the environment," Zoeller wrote. "Someone has to make a policy determination as to how much is acceptable and how much is too much. That someone should not be the federal judiciary." * * *

Bryan Corbin, a spokesman for the Indiana attorney general, said his office wanted to weigh in on the case primarily because of the implications for state sovereignty.

"To the extent that this lawsuit would enable a court to cap CO2 emissions that states would permit," the brief says, "allowing some states to seek common-law injunctions against industries in other states would undermine the entire state-federal regulatory scheme."

Posted by Marcia Oddi on September 10, 2010 06:45 AM
Posted to Courts in general | Environment | Indiana Government