Green Daily

Eighteen states, plus the Corporation Counsel for the City of New York, the City Solicitor of Baltimore, and 13 environmental advocacy groups announced that they are taking the EPA back to court over the agency's failure to regulate greenhouse gas emissions.

Last April, in Commonwealth of Massachusetts et al. v. Environmental Protection, the Supreme Court ruled that the EPA improperly declined to regulate pollutants that contribute to climate change.

One year later, the states are still waiting on the EPA to, I dunno, actually do something. Apparently, the EPA sent a draft of the regulations over to the Office of Management and Budget (an arm of the White House) in December 2007. And since then? Radio silence.

Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley wrote to EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson in January, asking about the hold-up, since the agency had promised draft regulations by the end of 2007 and final regulations by October 2008.

Then, just last week, Administrator Johnson wrote a letter to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee explaining the agency's actions on developing regulations to date. After much consideration, Johnson is going to solicit public comment through an Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPR).

ANPR is pretty much inside-the-beltway speak for "we're going to publish a tiny notice in the Federal Register, accept some comments, and sit on our hands until further notice." When an agency uses ANPR, they generally accept comments for 6-12 months -- we're looking at least another year before the EPA gets 'round to following the Supreme Court decision.

You might imagine that the plaintiffs in the original lawsuit are more than a bit put out by this news. So they filed a petition with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit to require the EPA act within 60 days of a ruling in their favor.

The petition will take a while to wind through the Court of Appeals. If the appellate court orders the writ of mandamus, I'm fairly certain that the EPA will appeal to the Supreme Court.

I can't help but wonder what the court will look like by then – we'll have a new president and some of the more senior members of the court (Justice Stevens turns 88 this month; Justice Ginsberg is 75) may decide to hang up their robes if a Democrat is elected.