States stepped in to fill the federal environmental-regulatory void after Kyoto withdrawal

Evidence

More recently, by contrast, the states are increasingly the ones either cajoling the federal government to do more or themselves initiating more demanding regulation. In the aftermath of the Bush administration’s withdrawal from the Kyoto Protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, many states passed their own laws designed to reduce emissions that might contribute to global warming. By late 2003, approximately half of the states had passed such legislation. Many states also brought formal legal challenges against the federal government. In late 2002andearly2003,agroupof(notcoincidentallydownwind)northeastern and western states publicly condemned the federal government’s air pollution control policy and announced a series of court challenges. In December 2002, six northeastern states and the State of Washington challenged in court the EPA’s newly issued New Source Review regulations under the Clean Air Act, on the ground that they unduly relaxed pollution control requirements applicable to existing major stationary sources of air pollution. In February 2003, three states in the Northeast gave formal notice of their intent to sue the EPA for failing to establish ambient air standards and regulations for carbon dioxide as a so-called criteria pollutant under the Clean Air Act, which would require nationwide regulations. Later that same month, ten northeastern states gave the EPA formal notice that they would sue the agency for failing to regulate carbon dioxide emissions from power plants under the Clean Air Act, as well as failing to update federal regulation of sulfur dioxide and particulate matter emissions from those plants. Finally, in November 2003, the attorneys general of New York and Connecticut announced they would bring new enforcement actions to fill the void left by the EPA’s decision to drop lawsuits filed during the Clinton administration against old coal-fired power plants. — Richard J. Lazarus, The Making of Environmental Law, 1095

Categorization

• XREF: Directly reverses the pre-1970s decentralized-solution pessimism in ch5/ch6; ties to California’s air-quality role and state-laboratory federalism familiar from Legal Systems. — connects to: Fragmented U.S. lawmaking institutions structurally favor slow incremental change over sweeping reform — Richard J. Lazarus, The Making of Environmental Law, 170; Republicans learned to pursue environmental deregulation quietly to avoid public backlash — Richard J. Lazarus, The Making of Environmental Law, 1086; Kyoto’s exemption of developing states let the US and Australia reject it (+2 more)
• SEED: Angle possible: the post-Kyoto state litigation wave as prelude to Massachusetts v. EPA and how subnational actors co-produce federal environmental law.

Broader Connections

• Kyoto’s exemption of developing states let the US and Australia reject it #responds-to (0.78)
• Decentralized regulation rationally pushes states to export pollution across borders #complicates (0.75) — Richard J. Lazarus, The Making of Environmental Law, 188
• Executive authority was used because Congress blocked climate legislation #expands (0.72) — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 2625