California and other states are now in the forefront of the response to global warming in the wake of the recent congressional retreat from federal climate legislation. California’s Global Warming Solutions Act, widely known as AB 32, imposes 80 percent carbon emission reductions by 2050 across all sectors of the economy. California obtains 30 percent of its power from beyond its borders, most of it from states in the Pacific Northwest and Southwest.
However, California Watch reports that, in response, the attorneys general of at least four states are preparing to sue California if the state’s landmark law limiting greenhouse gas emissions survives a challenge at the ballot box this November.
The attorneys general of Alabama, Nebraska, Texas and North Dakota have been devising a legal strategy to challenge the California act on the grounds that it interferes with the right to freely conduct interstate commerce.
Wayne Stenehjem, the attorney general of North Dakota, is quoted as saying "We are going to test the limits of how much you can constrain interstate commerce in the name of climate change and will be posing a direct challenge to the interstate commerce clause of the U.S. Constitution”.
Stenehjem’s fellow attorneys general are already at the forefront of using the courts to slow climate regulations. Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott sued the EPA in federal court earlier this year, hoping to overturn the agency’s "endangerment finding" that greenhouse gases pose a threat to the environment and public health – a finding which triggered the agency’s ability to regulate CO2 emissions.
Two Texas oil companies, Valero Energy Corp. and Tesoro Corp., are thus far the biggest contributors to the effort to block the California law governing greenhouse gases, channelling more than $4 million into the campaign.
The legal challenge highlights the difficulty of advancing the cause of the threat posed by global climate change in the USA. The Federal Government must take a lead in this area if any progress is to be achieved.
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