Flashback: JunkScience predicts outcome of EPA ‘endangerment finding’ litigation

We aren’t K St. lawyers bilking deep-pocketed clients at $500+ per hour — but we knew the endangerment finding litigation against the EPA was doomed from the start.

In our Dec. 28, 2010 posting “GOP all set to wimp out?“, we wrote:

… Moreover, while the portion of the EPA’s climate rules that is flagrantly illegal is likely to be overturned (i.e., the so-called “tailoring rule” under which EPA unilaterally amended the Clean Air Act to limit regulation of greenhouse gases from 100-ton emitters to 75,000-ton emitters), it is unlikely that the Court will overturn the EPA’s so-called “endangerment funding” (which declares that greenhouse gases are a threat to the public welfare).

Under the 1984 Supreme Court case Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council, it is extremely difficult to show that an agency has acted arbitrarily and capriciously in violation of the Administrative Procedures Act…

Following today’s DC Circuit Appellate Court hearing on the endangerment finding, the Wall Street Journal reported:

… During the first day of court hearings, members of a three-judge panel said they were required by law to give deference to the EPA’s finding that greenhouse-gas emissions were very likely responsible for most global warming over the last half-century, and were a threat to humans and the environment.

  To prevail, the industry challengers would have to show the EPA’s findings were arbitrary, capricious or an abuse of government discretion.

  “You seem to be asking us to determine that the EPA is incorrect, but that is not the standard,” Chief Judge David Sentelle told a lawyer for the challengers. Such a determination “would not be enough to win the case for you,” he said…

As we pointed out in “GOP all set to wimp out?,” Energy and Commerce Chairman Fred Upton and other Congressional GOP were entirely wrong to rely on litigation to save America from EPA greenhouse gas regulation.

Congressional GOP have had the power, but have failed to do anything to stop the Obama EPA since the 112th Congress commenced. Shame on them.

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