Wednesday, November 3, 2010

These are Good, High-paying Jobs that Can't be Outsourced: A Surge in Lawsuits Challenging E.P.A. on Climate

The attorneys that is.
Except for installers and the folks who shovel snow off solar panels in the snow belt every other job can be outsourced.
From the NYT's Green blog:
With many eyes on how Tuesday’s elections will affect congressional action on climate and energy issues, a new report points out that the battle over greenhouse gas emissions has been raging quietly on another front: the courts.

Litigation over greenhouse gas regulation is sharply on the rise, according to a report issued on Wednesday by DB Climate Change Advisors, climate change investment and research business of Deutsche Asset Management.

The number of climate-change related lawsuits doubled in 2006-7, hit a plateau for several years and is now increasing again. DB says that such suits are on track to triple in 2010 and perhaps grow into the indefinite future.

In January my colleague John Schwartz wrote about lawsuits brought by individuals against fuel and utility companies naming them as responsible parties in man-made climate change.

But the new report looks mainly at lawsuits surrounding government regulation of heat-trapping gases like carbon dioxide. While it found that environmentalists had filed nearly a quarter of all such lawsuits since 2001, seeking more regulation, the new surge is being driven by the opposite camp.

“The largest increase in litigation has been in the area of challenges to federal action, specifically industry challenges to proposed E.P.A. efforts to regulate greenhouse gas emissions,” the report says.

In particular, industry groups are taking aim at three Obama-era Environmental Protection Agency regulations: the December 2009 finding that greenhouses cases endanger human health and welfare; the tightening of fuel efficiency standards for cars and light trucks in April; and rules released in May governing emissions by factories and power plants....MORE