While Michigan lawmakers are taking fossil fuel companies to court for delaying the green transition, the Alberta government is hampering clean energy.
Nearly 17 years after the Environmental Protection Agency declared that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases threaten the public’s health and welfare, the agency on Thursday rescinded the landmark legal opinion underpinning a wave of federal policies aimed at climate change.
America’s two utility-scale offshore wind farms performed as well as gas power plants and better than coal in January — including during Winter Storm Fern.
By revoking its 17-year-old scientific finding that greenhouse gases endanger public health and welfare, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will demolish the legal underpinning of its authority to act on climate change under the Clean Air Act.
The company, long focused on cars and trucks, plans to begin manufacturing large batteries used by utilities, data centers, other businesses and homeowners.
State regulators discovered strong signs of oil pollution, including high levels of salt and toxic metals, in one family’s drinking water. But for two years, they repeatedly delayed basic tests to find the culprit — then closed the case.
The administration ended a program that documented excessive levels of a carcinogen at industrial facilities across the country. Environmental groups who say the move leaves polluted communities behind have filed suit.
The “Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence” — updated for the first time in 15 years — eliminates some 90 pages about climate science and comes just as numerous climate cases make their way through state and federal courts.
With its plans to revoke the endangerment finding, the administration is gambling that the U.S. Supreme Court will allow it to completely avoid regulating the nation’s top greenhouse gas sources.
