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Obama EPA to Act on Global Warming Emissions from New Coal Plants; Decision Will Overturn Unlawful, Last-Minute Bush Administration Effort to Block Action on Global Warming
Virginia Cramer and Josh Dorner, February 17, 2009 (Sierra Club)

"President Obama's Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) today took the first step toward regulating carbon dioxide emissions from coal-fired power plants. EPA, under the new leadership of Administrator Lisa Jackson, granted a petition from the Sierra Club and other groups calling for reconsideration of an unlawful, midnight memo issued by former EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson which sought to prohibit controls on global warming pollution from coal plants. EPA announced in a letter to the Sierra Club that it will publish a proposed rulemaking in the Federal Register and seek public comments on the decision in the near future.

"Today's decision is consistent with a previous ruling by the EPA's Environmental Appeals Board (EAB) in the Bonanza case, which found that there was no valid reason for the Bush administration's refusal to limit carbon dioxide emissions from new coal-fired power plants. The so-called Johnson Memo sought to unlawfully overturn that decision…"

From 350org via YouTube.

"…David Bookbinder, Chief Climate Counsel for the Sierra Club[:] "Today's victory is yet another indication that change really has come to Washington, and to EPA in particular. This decision stops the Bush Administration's final, last-minute effort to saddle President Obama with its do-nothing policy on global warming…Not only does today's decision signal a good start for our clean energy future, it also signals a return to policy based on sound science and the rule of law, not deep pocketbooks or politics…With coal-fired power plants emitting more than 30 percent of our global warming pollution, regulating their carbon dioxide is essential to making real progress in the fight against global warming… Today's announcement should cast significant further doubt on the approximately 100 coal-fired power plants that the industry is trying to rush through the permitting process without any limits on carbon dioxide. New coal plants were already a bad bet for investors and ratepayers and today's decisions make them an even bigger gamble.”