A group of states attempting to resurrect Bob Murray's lawsuit against the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) may have just been dealt a setback.
The states are asking the full D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals to reconsider the decision to toss their lawsuit, arguing that the impending arrival of environmental regulations which they are not prepared for should be blocked.
In what I assume is a deliberate attempt to undermine if not dismantle their claims, the EPA has pushed back the dates on which states are expected to comply.
Each state will be required to cuts the carbon emissions from its power sector by a specific amount that would add up to 30 percent by 2030 for the entire country.
But states are also assigned an interim carbon target. In the rule proposed last June, the EPA had envisioned the interim target’s compliance in 2020, but that will now be 2022.
States will also have until 2017 to submit compliance plans, a year later than first proposed.
I'm skeptical that the court will buy it if states claim they cannot reasonably be expected to comply within the next 7 years. That is a specious claim to make especially if the exact language of the regulations is still unknown.
If that is their claim, they should be asked why not; why can't they comply within that amount of time? Are they incompetent?