Obama blasts ‘lazy’ critics of carbon rules
…How the next president could expand Obama’s climate policies — or dismantle them
So let’s say a conservative hostile to Obama’s climate policies becomes president in 2016. What options does he actually have?
1) Sign a bill that handcuffs the EPA. If next year’s election brings us a Republican president with majorities in the House and Senate, he or she could always just pass a bill amending the Clean Air Act and curtailing the EPA’s authority over greenhouse gas emissions. Boom, done. This could range from blocking or modifying the Clean Power Plan to barring the EPA from ever regulating CO2 emissions in any sector.
2) Replace the Clean Power Plan with a new regulation. Alternatively, let’s imagine our Republican president doesn’t have majorities in Congress. Now things get trickier. A President Scott Walker can’t just refuse to regulate greenhouse gas emissions entirely. After all, the Supreme Court has ordered the EPA to do so as long as there’s evidence they cause harm (and that evidence is quite solid.)
So instead, a new president might have to take subtler steps to weaken Obama’s climate policies. Take the Clean Power Plan, which will force states to start cutting power plant emissions by 2022. One option is for a Republican president to initiate a new rulemaking process through the EPA to either undo Obama’s plan or replace it with another, less ambitious rule. The hitch? This would take at least 12 to 15 months — it involves a notice, a proposed rule, soliciting public comment, and so on. And the process would likely get bogged down by lawsuits from environmental groups (who are very, very skilled at this sort of litigation). Doable, but surprisingly difficult.
3) Implement the Clean Power Plan, but very loosely. Or the next president could opt for a quieter approach — allow Obama’s Clean Power Plan to proceed, but implement it weakly. In theory, there’s room to do this. Under the rule, states have to submit plans for how they’ll cut their power plant emissions by 2016, but they can request an extension until 2018. The EPA will then have to review the plans to make sure they’re robust. An administration that wasn’t very concerned about global warming might be able to get away with approving less aggressive plans from recalcitrant states like Texas or West Virginia.
“There’s a lot of latitude in the review process,” says Stanford’s Michael Wara. “The history of the Clean Air Act shows this. …