(Freedom.news) Acting on behalf of their citizens and in defense of their own budgets, 24 states have enjoined a lawsuit against the Obama Environmental Protection Agency over massive new climate regulations they say will dramatically increase costs while endangering the nation’s power grid.
As reported by The Washington Examiner, the new rules are part of President Obama’s attempt to craft a climate “legacy” through the imposition of stifling rules that critics argue will have minimal, if any, impact on so-called “climate change.”
The regulations, called the Clean Power Plan, “unlawfully expands the federal government’s regulatory power over electricity production and consumption in nearly every State,” the states involved in the suit said in a recent press release.
The states, led by West Virginia, have risen in number from an original group of 16, the WE noted. The states today include: Texas, Alabama, Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Jersey, Ohio, South Carolina, South Dakota, Utah, Wisconsin, Wyoming, the Arizona Corporations Commission, and the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality.
The states filed a Petition for Review Oct. 23 in federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., the circuit that hears all challenges to federal agencies. In addition, the states will also join in a motion by the coal industry to stay the rule – effectively putting it on pause – until the federal court has had an opportunity to review the legality of the regulation.
According to the press release, the states “argue the Rule is illegal and will have devastating impacts upon the States and their citizens.”
Obama telegraphed for months that the rule was forthcoming.
The plan “exceeds EPA’s authority by unlawfully forcing States to fundamentally alter state resource-planning and energy policy by shifting from coal-fired generation to other sources of power generation, with a significant emphasis on renewable sources,” the release notes.
“The Clean Power Plan is one of the most far-reaching energy regulations in this nation’s history,” said West Virginia’s Attorney General Patrick Morrisey. “West Virginia is proud to be leading the charge against this administration’s blatant and unprecedented attack on coal.”
“EPA claims to have sweeping power to enact such regulations based on a rarely-used provision of the Clean Air Act but such legal authority simply does not exist,” Morrisey said.
Plentiful coal is inexpensive, which is why it is the number one fuel used to create energy.
Morrisey added that imposing “drastic changes” in power production will increase costs for consumers as well as threaten the reliability of the power grid. The rule calls for states to reduce their carbon emissions by one-third by 2030 by getting rid of fossil fuels and boosting reliance and much more expensive and far less abundant solar and wind power, the states argued.
“As attorney general, I have a responsibility to protect the lives of millions of working families, the elderly and the poor, from such illegal and unconscionable federal government actions,” said Morrisey. “It’s the people who can afford it least who are going to be affected the most.”
As noted by the video below, Obama, running for his first term in 2008, cavalierly discussed his plan to cap greenhouse emissions in a manner that would cause electricity rates “to skyrocket” – costs incurred by power companies that would then “pass them along” to consumers:
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