For the past seven years, the courts have been our strongest defense against the Bush Administration’s attempts to gut federal environmental protections.
But in a strange twist, that pattern reversed itself last Friday when a federal appeals court struck down the Clean Air Interstate Rule (known as CAIR) – a measure to “cap and trade” sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides that contribute to ozone smog, acid rain, and fine particle pollution (soot). This measure was adopted in 2005 by the Environmental Protection Agency to curb power plant emissions, and has been praised by many environmental groups. According to the EPA, CAIR would have prevented 17,000 premature deaths each year from respiratory and heart disease caused by power plant emissions.
It’s unclear what the impacts of this decision will be here in New York. But in the 28 states that were affected by this rule, utilities were in the process of spending billions of dollars to upgrade their power plants to reduce dirty air emissions. Now it’s uncertain whether these upgrades will be completed, or even whether the ones that have already been installed will be used.
Congress should act now to pass a law that is as tough, if not tougher than, the CAIR rule that was struck down. The ramifications of this decision are – quite literally – breathtaking.