Why would Gov.Perry in a hotly contested governor’s race with Kay Bailey Hutchinson sue the EPA for regulating limits on carbon emissions? The question really is why did he wait so long? Perhaps it has something to do with appealing to his party’s wingnut base, and making his oil and gas patrons happy?
Texas Republican leaders Tuesday ramped up their fight against federal environmental efforts by filing suit to avoid facing limits on carbon dioxide emissions.
Gov. Rick Perry, Attorney General Greg Abbott and Agriculture Commissioner Todd Staples started a legal battle against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. […]
“They are using sweeping mandates, draconian punishments, to force a square peg of their vision into the round hole of reality,” Perry said. “In the process they are preparing to undo decades of progress while painting hardworking entrepreneurs as selfish (and) destroying hundreds of thousands of jobs in the process.”
Note of interest: Texas with all its oil refineries and coal fired power plants leads the country in CO2 emissions with over twice the amount produced by California. In fact, it produces 35% of the country’s CO2 emissions from industrial sources. Well, you know what they say: everything’s bigger in Texas.
Federal officials sardonically commented that they were not surprised by the lawsuit. Many critics of Perry’s legal action doubt it will succeed:
Environmental advocate Tom Smith of Public Citizen says the state’s suit ignores an overwhelming body of evidence that confirms the health dangers posed by ozone. Smith says a similar suit filed by the state of Massachusetts in 2007 failed and he doesn’t think Texas’ case has a chance.
“Texas is stuck,” said Smith. “The Supreme Court has ruled against Texas and a number of states who objected to global warming emissions being regulated. So we’ve had our day in court.”
It’s this close to being a “frivolous” lawsuit. Not that it matters to Perry. We all know this is political grandstanding on his part. It makes his donors happy, it makes the Tea Party wing of the GOP happy and it gets him national attention for any future run for the GOP nomination for President in 2012 or beyond.
In short, the Texas lawsuit may be based on bad science and bad law, but it’s purely good politics at a time when Republicans and Big Oil have mnanaged to decrease the Public’s belief in climate change through their relentless disinformation campaign.
It won’t have escaped many of our readers’ notice that there has been what can only be described as a media frenzy (mostly in the UK) with regards to climate change in recent weeks. The coverage has contained more bad reporting, misrepresentation and confusion on the subject than we have seen in such a short time anywhere. While the UK newspaper scene is uniquely competitive (especially compared to the US with over half a dozen national dailies selling in the same market), and historically there have been equally frenzied bouts of mis-reporting in the past on topics as diverse as pit bulls, vaccines and child abductions, there is something new in this mess that is worth discussing. And that has been a huge shift in the Overton window for climate change.
Well it snowed a lot in DC, so what do you expect? As for Perry, he wasn’t be the first political opportunist to sue the EPA, nor will he be the last. Get ready for a wave of lawsuits by states with GOP governors or a large contingent of coal and/or oil and gas interests. It’s what they do.