Source: http://acoel.org/2012/01/default.aspx
Timestamp: 2019-04-26 12:21:15+00:00

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On August 8, 2011, EPA published its very lengthy Cross-State Air Pollution Rule (CSAPR). An indication of CSAPR’s complexity -- and its unpopularity with those affected by it -- is that its promulgation prompted states, cities, labor unions, industry trade associations, and individual industry sources to submit to EPA 62 requests for administrative reconsideration and to file 45 petitions for judicial review of the rule. Because CSAPR is a Clean Air Act rule of “nationwide scope and effect,” under § 307(b), the 45 petitions challenging that rule had to be filed in the D.C. Circuit.
The focus of my article today is not the content of CSAPR (though there is much in the final rule that is a cause for concern), but rather on some of the procedural difficulties faced by large groups of appellants challenging a complex EPA rule in the D.C. Circuit. In particular, my focus is on the restrictions placed by the court on the number and length of briefs that can be filed in a case that involves 45 aligned petitioners who say they have over 55 substantive issues that they want to raise in their principal briefs.
Under Rule 28.1(e) of the Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure (FRAP), an “appellant’s principal brief . . . is acceptable if . . . it contains no more than 14,000 words . . ..” In a case involving only one appellant challenging a simple agency rule, the D.C. Circuit has appropriately interpreted FRAP 28.1(e) as allowing that one appellant to file a principal brief not to exceed 14,000 words. But what happens when dozens of aligned petitioners challenge an extremely lengthy and complex agency rule? And what happens when -- fearing the “speak now or forever hold your peace” aspects of Clean Air Act § 307(b) -- those numerous aligned appellants must address scores of different aspects of the final rule?
Most appellants in these kinds of cases understand (and may even empathize with) the desire of the reviewing judges not to have to read dozens of lengthy briefs addressing the inner workings of labyrinthine Clean Air Act programs. However, as EPA develops ever-more-complex regulatory programs -- programs that, under the terms of Clean Air Act § 307(b), must be challenged upon promulgation -- petitioners are in a bind. Aware that there will be a limit on the amount of space they will have in which to explain a challenged EPA program and to articulate why parts of that program are unlawful, petitioners must often choose to brief only a few issues, thus perhaps waiving their rights to challenge other program elements that are of concern.
Conspiracy theorists among us might be questioning whether court limits on briefing serve as motivation to EPA to make new regulatory programs even more complex. In particular, such individuals wonder whether EPA rule drafters are now producing more complicated rules because they know that the more complex new rules are, the less likely it is that rule challengers will -- under current court procedures -- be able to present their concerns fully to the reviewing court.
This surely had to have been in the mind of one attorney who several years ago had to present oral argument in the D.C. Circuit on an issue which had to be briefed in very few words. During argument, she was told by one of the judges that she might well have a good point, and it was just too bad that the point had not been developed more fully in her brief. The advocate in that case is to be commended for not losing her cool and condemning a system under which words per petitioner seem to be allocated in inverse proportion to the complexity of the case(s) before the court. But she was almost certainly thinking something along those lines.
Have caused concerns for years.
Their views with open ears.
Those ears are closed, I fear.
The less the courts will hear.
There is no alternative. Whatever the causes, pace or impacts of climate change, people, cultures, economies and eco-systems will adapt to climate change as it occurs. What’s in question is where, how much and when adaptation will occur and with what strategic planning, distribution of costs and injury.
To date, the inevitability of adaptation has been over-shadowed by the attention to efforts to prevent global warming. Scary projections of flooded coastal cities and wholesale ecological change have been used more to support campaigns to reduce CO2 emissions than to promote serious planning for ocean rise and changed eco-systems. Adaptation planning has not been the priority and has even seemed a cop-out. But as hopes to prevent or slow climate change are not realized, adaption planning is emerging as a priority.
Indeed, behind the headlines efforts to plan for adaptation are already underway. President Obama’s initial support for cap and trade got the attention. But he also issued an Executive Order establishing a Climate Change Adaptation Task Force that is coordinating very significant federal efforts to gather data and plan for adaptation. Many of those efforts are collected at EPA’s webpage on adaptation. More than a dozen states have commissioned adaptation plans, e.g., the Massachusetts Climate Change Adaptation Report. Some universities have developed programs focused on adaptation planning, e.g., UNC’s Center for Law, Environment, Adaptation and Resources (CLEAR). Insurers and re-insurers, public authorities responsible for long-term infrastructure, and societies of professionals such as engineers and others are putting serious consideration into what adaptation will require over time by way of changed standards for public works and buildings.
These efforts do not yet amount to a broad plan, but are laying the foundations for adaptation planning to seep broadly into capital planning and resource protection efforts across all facets of our economy. Compulsory central planning is probably not a politically acceptable option – but the inevitability and breadth of adaptation efforts mean that millions of decision-makers still will plan for adaptation over time.
I had the privilege to be a speaker at a CCS conference held at the Canadian Embassy in Washington DC on January 19, 2012. The conference was hosted by the Global CCS Institute for the purpose of discussing the strategic directions expected to be undertaken in the development and deployment of the geologic sequestration of carbon dioxide. Central to this issue is the national and international concern over climate change at a time when our nation’s energy supply is so closely tied to the use of fossil fuels.
In his keynote speech at the conference Charles McConnell of USDOE’s Office of Fossil Fuels offered the view that coal must be economically advantaged and environmentally sustainable. Much of the conference was dedicated to a review of the many CCS projects being undertaken around the world in an effort to demonstrate the feasibility of the technology.
A key component of the development of CCS is, of course, the cost of the technology and the opportunities that exist to offset those costs. One such opportunity is the use of capture carbon dioxide to enhance the production of oil (EOR). While many of the speakers at the conference recognized the early value of CCS/EOR projects, both Brad Page of the Global CCS Institute and Steve Winberg of Consol Energy pointed out that EOR capacity is only 20% of the ultimate capacity that will be needed to meet the President’s carbon dioxide reduction target. Other alternatives for the geologic sequestration of carbon dioxide include depleted oil and gas reserves and greenfield deep saline formations.
My remarks at the conference were directed at the significant leadership being undertaken by the various states to address the legal and regulatory uncertainties associated with CCS activities. West Virginia is among those states where a legislatively mandated working group has recommended not only a comprehensive set of regulatory requirements, but also a liability transfer mechanism during the post operational phase of a project tied to the establishment of an operator generated trust fund. That working group has also recommended a comprehensive set of policies related to property issues including a determination that the use of pore space may be considered a public use to be authorized by permit. Click here for the list of conference speakers.
Phase I report “reliance letters” issued by an Environmental Professional (EP) may be misunderstood and misused in the context of conducting CERCLA All Appropriate Inquiry (AAI). The term “reliance letter,” in fact, is nowhere to be found in either the Federal All Appropriate Inquiry Regulations or the related ASTM Standard E 1527-05.
Consider the following common AAI situation: A client has contracted to buy property for which a Phase I Environmental Site Assessment (Phase I ESA) report was recently prepared for the seller. To avoid the costs of obtaining a new Phase I report, the client asks whether it can use the Phase I provided by the seller to satisfy its environmental diligence obligations. The Phase I report explicitly states that it can be used and relied upon only by the contracting user for which it was prepared. The EP may be willing to issue a reliance letter to the client for a fee or occasionally at no cost. But what exactly is a reliance letter and how does it relate to the objective of compliance with AAI requirements?
Unauthorized use prohibitions and reliance letters are intended to protect EPs from potential claims by third-parties who may rely on a Phase I report prepared for another. Nevertheless, an unsophisticated third-party recipient of a reliance letter may construe such a letter as documentation of compliance with AAI requirements. A reliance letter establishes the recipient’s status as an authorized “user” primarily for purposes of the party’s legal relationship with the EP. Requesting a reliance letter to establish authorized user status is only one of several AAI issues that should be considered by third-party users of Phase I reports.
Other important questions to be considered include whether the one year/180 day regulatory shelf-life of the report has expired. Also, what independent inquiries must a third-party undertake to satisfy the AAI regulations? Third-party recipients of reliance letters may easily overlook conducting the “user” inquiries required by the AAI regulations.
The ASTM Standard further contemplates that the results of the user’s separate inquiries be provided to the EP prior to completion of the EP’s Phase I tasks (the AAI regulations are less clear). How do those provisions of the ASTM Standard apply to the third-party reliance situation? Is the third-party user obligated to accumulate the necessary user information and provide it to the EP after-the-fact? If so, how should the EP deal with any new substantive information? Also, if the results of the user inquiry are not referenced in the Phase I report, how does the third-party document that it has satisfied those obligations?
Of course, the EP may decline to issue a reliance letter or may impose costs or terms that are unacceptable. The EP may even suggest that, absent such use and reliance authorization, a new Phase I ESA must be conducted. But is that correct? The regulations set out conditions for third-party use of information contained in a Phase I report prepared for another. No requirement that the EP preparing the report issue a reliance letter is included among those conditions. The ASTM Standard specifically provides that no particular legal relationship between the EP and the user is necessary for the user to satisfy AAI obligations. With or without a reliance letter, the AAI regulations and ASTM Standard contemplate that the third-party may use the results of a report prepared for another person to partially satisfy its AAI obligations.
These questions, and perhaps others, suggest that a third-party user of a Phase I report prepared for another should be aware of the limitations of a reliance letter, if issued, and carefully consider all pertinent regulations in conducting its AAI.
My father introduced me to the big band sound he grew up with in the ‘20s, ‘30s and ‘40s. In addition to the musical skirmishes between the powerful brass and elegant woodwind sections that highlighted the genre, he was fond of the lyrics. One of his favorite ditties was a playful calypso tune written by Sy Oliver and Trummie Young, first recorded by Jimmie Lunceford in 1939. The enlightened refrain gives the recipe for being highly effective -- “Tain’t what you do, it’s the way that you do it – that’s what gets results.” At about the same time Lunceford was leading his show band, sociologist Robert J. Merton was focusing on avoiding the wrong results. He popularized the concept of “unintended consequences,” the gist of which is humans cannot fully control the outcome of their actions so be careful what you do and for what you ask. Seventy-five years later, EPA’s recent proliferation of regulations with short time fuses and no existing or foreseeable means of compliance demonstrates no such careful thought.
Merton’s analysis provided five causes for unintended consequences: ignorance, error, immediate interest, basic values and self-defeating prophecy. While these five causes could form the outline for comments on almost any rule, the one that might be most applicable to EPA’s recent flurry of regulatory activity is what Merton called “the imperious immediacy of interest” which refers to instances where the actor’s paramount concern with the immediate action excludes the consideration of further or other unforeseen consequences of the same act. The speed in which the recent rules have been promulgated, the leap in technology that they require, and the brevity of the time period by which compliance is required are unprecedented and seem destined to result in unintended consequences.
Examples of these rules include the corporate average fuel economy (“CAFE”) standards which EPA established in 2009. Under the CAFE standards, Model Year 2011 vehicles must achieve 27.3 mpg. The requirement is ratcheted up to 35 mpg by 2016, and a whopping 54.5 mpg by 2025. Those developing the standards were warned that the standards would result in the production of smaller, lighter and deadlier cars. The developers not only required increased mileage, they limited greenhouse gases (GHGs), including CO2 emissions, from motor vehicles – the first time that GHGs were regulated as air pollutants under the Clean Air Act. Standard developers also recognized that regulating GHGs as pollutants for mobile sources would also trigger regulation of GHGs from stationary sources under the Clean Air Act’s prevention of significant deterioration of air quality program. The latter was not an unintended consequence, but where such regulation might lead our economy and society is anyone’s guess. We need only look at the recent reports of spontaneous combustion of electric vehicles to get some idea.
Another example is EPA’s issuance of the cross-state air pollution rule which afforded electric generating facilities only four months between its promulgation and the date of compliance on January 1, 2012. EPA promulgated the rule amid warnings by states and others that the electric system reliability was jeopardized. Fortunately, the D.C. Circuit stayed the rule on December 30. Similarly, EPA pushed out the EGU MACT standard after allowing itself only a few months to consider tens -of -thousands of comments on the proposed rule. Such speed of promulgation without regard for unintended consequences has EPA staffers concerned about the quality of their work product. Perhaps it’s time to revisit the requirements for regulatory impact analysis to consider new rules in light of Merton’s five causes of unintended consequences and Lunceford’s catchy tune. The alternative may be to sing another tune Lunceford popularized -- Blue in the Night.
Our dramatic progress in environmental policy from 1970 to 1992 resulted from a healthy competition between the two political parties, I argue in Politics Failed, Not Ideas. Competition between Republicans and Democrats gave us the Clean Air and Water Acts, the Acid Rain Trading program, and the 1992 Rio Treaties on Climate Change, Biodiversity and Sustainable Development. With Mitt Romney’s victory in the New Hampshire primary, it is time to ask whether this healthy competition over environmental issues will ever return, or whether the concept of “Republican Environmentalism” is an anachronism, if not an oxymoron.
A new renaissance of Republican environmentalism may be just around the corner, according to Joe Klein. In his December Time Magazine article, Why Don't They Like Me, Klein argues that both Romney and Gingrich are “empowerment Republicans” of the 1990’s, who don’t really oppose progressive goals so much as they maintain that they can accomplish them in a better way. A lot of this is damning with faint praise by a partisan who is trying to de-legitimate Romney with voters by creating a perception that he lacks character and flips-flops on issues. But at least on the environment, there is a core of truth to the point. After all, occasional claims to the contrary notwithstanding, most Republicans don’t actually want to poison our children and befoul our air and water. Republican objections to federal environmental initiatives in recent years have had more to do with means than ends.
Republicans generally oppose big government and centralized planning of the economy. But the press has come to define “strong” environmental policies in terms of the level of federal government coercion rather than the amount of progress made toward meeting environmental goals. For example, the George W. Bush Administration made some progress in reducing emissions of some Greenhouse Gases (GHGs) through the Methane to Markets program (which in fairness, it inherited from the Clinton Administration). This successful program worked co-operatively with companies to plug leaks of methane from pipelines – a classic win-win for the environment and the economy – and has now gone global under Obama. However, repeatedly we were told that the Bush Administration was “doing nothing” about GHGs because they were opposed to a federal cap-and-trade program for CO2.
A second basic difference between Republicans and Democrats on the environment is that Republicans generally need to be shown credible proof that environmental regulation will produce benefits several times greater than its costs. Most Democrats, on the other hand, already “know” in their hearts that environmental programs are good without needing to be convinced by data. Then Chair of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, California Democrat Barbara Boxer, once exclaimed in frustration at a scientific witness during a hearing: “Doctor, I may not know the facts, but I know what’s right!” On the other hand, Bush Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs Administrator John Graham was able to get tough environmental regulations such as the off-road diesel rule or the first tightening of CAFE standards in a generation through a skeptical White House when he could show the doubters that regulation would produce health benefits several times greater than their cost. For further discussion on this issue click here.
Republicans and Democrats do look at environmental policies differently, just as they look at what creates true international security or the government’s proper role in energy policy differently. But if a Republican ends up in the White House on January 21, 2013, we could begin to make progress on the environment again if we focused on the areas where we can find common ground rather than wedge issues that make people on both sides feel morally superior but don’t get things done.
The Supreme Court heard oral argument this morning (January 9, 2012) in Sackett v. EPA, No. 10-1062. EPA had issued a compliance order charging the Sacketts with filling in a wetlands, in the course of building their home, in violation of the Clean Water Act and requiring them to restore their property. The Sacketts dispute that their property is a wetlands and seek an opportunity for judicial review of EPA’s order. EPA argues that the Sacketts could comply with the EPA order or submit an application for a wetlands permit or defend if EPA brings an enforcement action, but may not seek judicial review of EPA’s order.
The tenor of the oral argument did not bode well for the United States. Some of the Court’s questions seemed to focus on how to write the opinion and the consequences of a ruling for the Sacketts. If the Sacketts prevail, it will be important to see how EPA responds and what if any changes are made to EPA’s practice and procedure for issuing orders in wetlands and perhaps other matters. The transcript of the Supreme Court argument is available [here].
Chief Justice Roberts asked “what would you do, Mr. Stewart, if you received this compliance order? (Tr. 35). When Stewart responded that one could apply for an after-the-fact permit,” Chief Justice Roberts replied “You wouldn’t do that, right? You know you will never get an after the fact permit if the EPA has sent you a compliance order saying you’ve got wetlands.” (Tr. 36) Earlier, Justice Kagan had asked counsel for the Sacketts rhetorically whether the critical point wasn’t that EPA would not entertain an after-the-fact permit while a compliance order is outstanding. (Tr. 12). Justice Alito expressed the view it “seems very strange for that, for a party to apply for a permit on the ground that they don't need a permit at all.” (Tr. 14).
The government’s alternative solution, that one could comply with the compliance order, met with an incredulous response from Chief Justice Roberts: ”That's what you would do? You would say, I don't think there are wetlands on my property but EPA does, so I'm going to take out all the fill, I'm going to plant herbaceous trees or whatever it is, and I will worry about whether to -- that way, I'll just do what the government tells me I should do.” (Tr. 36-37).
It is of course always difficult to predict the outcome of a Supreme Court case with certainty simply based on oral argument. That being said, it is also difficult to be optimistic about the government’s chances of prevailing based on the comments made by the court during oral argument today. Whatever the outcome, the Court’s ruling will likely be an important environmental and administrative law precedent.
After a failed attempt at the end of the Schwarzenegger Administration, under current Governor Jerry Brown, California is now pushing forward with its new “green chemistry” approach to the regulation of chemicals in consumer products. These regulations are likely to be formally unveiled early this year and will require extensive risk and life cycle analyses for prioritized products, which are likely to initially include children’s products, personal care products, and household cleaning products.
The revised California green chemistry regulations will establish a four-step process to identify safer consumer product alternatives.
1. Chemicals: The State will publish an initial list of Chemicals of Concern (COCs), likely involving close to 3,000 substances.
2. Priority Products: Next, it will develop a list of Priority Products based on its evaluation of products that contain the identified COCs, as well as the distribution, use, and disposal patterns.
3. Business Duty to Notify and Evaluate: Responsible entities will be required to notify the State when their product is listed as a Priority Product and to perform an Alternatives Assessment.
4. Product/Chemical Limits/Regulations: California will identify and impose a “Regulatory Response” to limit potential adverse public health and environmental impacts.
• Products regulated by other federal or California state regulatory programs or international trade agreements, where the program or agreement provides an equivalent or greater level of protection of public health and the environment than would be provided if the product were listed as a Priority Product (no examples are specified, but EU programs seem likely candidates).
• A lower or higher concentration if specified by DTSC in the Priority Products list.
The regulations apply to any “responsible entity,” which includes the manufacturer, or, if the manufacturer does not comply, the importer or retailer.
This assessment remains at the heart of the Green Chemistry regulations. Each must be conducted in two stages, with a report sent to State regulators at the end of each stage.
Necessity/Identification of Alternatives: In the first stage, product criteria are identified (e.g., by function, performance, technical, and legal requirements). A statement must be provided on whether the COC or a substitute chemical is necessary to meet the product’s requirements. Next, alternatives to the usage of the COC must be identified and screened, and a work plan proposed for the second stage.
Detailed Assessment of Alternatives: The second stage requires a more detailed assessment of alternatives. The product and each alternative must be evaluated with respect to relevant factors and associated exposure pathways and life cycle segments. At this stage, the responsible entity selects an alternative that will replace or modify the Priority Product or decides not to modify the Priority Product (or discontinue the distribution of the product in California).
At a minimum, product information will be required to be provided to consumers if a Priority Product contains a COC above the de mimimis level. Additional possible regulatory responses include mandating implementation of engineered safety measures designed to control access or limit exposure to the COC in a Priority Product and, at the extreme, a potential prohibition on sale of the Priority Product within California.
With reform of the Toxic Substances Control Act stalled in Congress, Governor Brown’s Administration appears more determined than its predecessor to take the lead in product stewardship and chemical regulation through California’s so-called “green chemistry” initiative.
In the past few years, more than 25 multi-party cases have been filed against semiconductor manufacturers, alleging that employees working in “clean rooms” were exposed to chemicals, such as ethylene glycol ethers, which caused birth defects in the employees’ children. The majority of these cases have been filed in Delaware state court and seek direct recovery in tort for children plaintiffs, who allege that they were exposed to these chemicals through their employee-parents prior to conception or in utero. In addition to raising a number of environmental and causation issues, these cases present significant questions about the scope and extent of the duties employers in the non-medical industries have to unborn persons. They also raise important questions about whether such claims should be addressed through civil litigation, or whether they fall within the exclusive domain of workers’ compensation.
In a pivotal opinion, on September 30, 2011, Delaware Superior Court Judge Jan R. Jurden (who is presiding over more than a dozen clean room cases) dismissed a clean room case, Peters v. Texas Instruments. Applying Texas law (where the alleged exposures occurred), Judge Jurden found that the exclusivity provision of the Texas Workers’ Compensation Act (which provides that workers’ compensation is the exclusive remedy for alleged workplace injuries) barred the child’s (and its parents’) civil claims against defendant Texas Instruments, because the child plaintiff’s claims were derivative of and dependent on the parent-employee’s. Id. The court also found that, to the extent that the plaintiffs sought to hold Texas Instruments liable for acts predating the child’s conception, Texas courts have not recognized preconception tort liability and it would be improper for Delaware courts to do so when applying Texas law, particularly because expansion of a legal duty falls within the realm reserved to the legislative, as opposed to judicial, branches. It is noted that the Plaintiffs are seeking reconsideration in Peters, but it will be a difficult decision to change from a legal perspective.
The Peters decision may be the first of many dismissals in the series of clean room birth defects cases. Peters is also an important decision in the developing body of transgenerational tort law and birth defects cases generally. While a handful of courts have recognized that medical professionals can be liable to individuals for their actions prior to that person’s birth, numerous courts have recognized that imposing duties to unborn children beyond a very narrow set of circumstances would not only prove unworkable, but would also constitute an improper judicial interference in a realm reserved for the legislative branch. An example is the Texas Appellate Court decision in Chenault v. Huie. Further, employers spend millions on workers’ compensation every year. One of the benefits that workers’ compensation schemes offer to employers is the promise of exclusive and limited liability: an employee’s recovery for work-related injuries is limited to the amount fixed by the governing workers’ compensation scheme and the employer will not be liable in tort, unless the injury was intentionally caused. If parent-employees could bring lawsuits on behalf of their minor children for birth defects allegedly caused by preconception or in utero exposures in the course of their employment, it would create a significant loophole in workers’ compensation schemes and disrupt the delicate balance state legislatures have struck between employer and employee interests in the workers’ compensation arena.
For some advocates of greenhouse gas regulation, tort law has become the primary vehicle to achieve their goal. Dissatisfied with their progress in the political branches, they’ve begun presenting their claims to courts as tort lawsuits. When the claims are rejected, they repackage them in different common-law wrappings and sue again.
The first of these suits was Connecticut et al. v. American Electric Power Co. et al. (“AEP”) (dismissed by the U.S. Supreme Court earlier this year), in which several States and land trusts sought to declare greenhouse gas emissions a common law “nuisance” and secure an injunction capping emissions from a small group of national electric utilities at levels the plaintiffs deemed “reasonable.” Next came Comer et al. v. Murphy Oil USA et al., where a group of Mississippi landowners sued the same utilities, and scores of other companies, for damages caused by Hurricane Katrina, claiming that the defendants’ greenhouse gas emissions constituted a common law “nuisance,” a “trespass,” and “negligence.” (After dismissal by the district court and Fifth Circuit, the plaintiffs simply refiled the case—motions to dismiss again are in briefing). Next, in Native Village of Kivalina v. ExxonMobil Corp. et al., an Alaskan village relied on many of these same common law theories, with allegations of a “conspiracy” added for good measure, suing many of the same defendants for costs the village would purportedly incur protecting itself from storms and other risks they attributed to climate change. (The district court’s dismissal was recently argued to the Ninth Circuit.) While courts have thus far rejected all of these suits at the pleading stage, the complaints reflect a continuing trend towards regulation by litigation, in which individual groups of plaintiffs endeavor to advance policy goals through common law actions.
The most recent case is Alec L. et al. v. Jackson et al. Casting aside even the pretense of a traditional tort case, where one party seeks relief for damages caused by another party’s conduct, the plaintiffs in Alec L. are suing five federal Executive Branch agencies (the Environmental Protection Agency, Department of Defense, Department of the Interior, Department of Commerce, and Department of Agriculture), and explicitly seek an order directing those agencies to promulgate regulations addressing greenhouse gas emissions. Relying on the “public trust doctrine,” an archaic common law concept rarely cited in modern court decisions, the plaintiffs assert that the federal government holds the atmosphere “in trust” for the public, and that these agencies therefore have a fiduciary obligation to protect the atmosphere from greenhouse gas emissions. In particular, they ask the court to order the agencies to impose immediate and drastic restrictions on greenhouse gas emissions in this country (6% annually), with the ultimate goal of virtually eliminating the use of conventional fuels by the end of the century.
There is no reason to think that the claims in Alec L. will fare any better than those in the other tort cases discussed above. All of these claims seek to impose liability for global climatic conditions that are attributable (if at all) to greenhouse gas emissions from billions of sources around the planet over the course of centuries, not to any particular, small group of defendants. Moreover, they would all put a federal court in the position of making fundamental policy determinations regarding the proper regulatory approach to issues of national and international importance, ordinarily reserved for the political branches. Indeed, in this respect, the claims in Alec L. are even more difficult to rationalize than those in AEP, as Alec L. asks the court to commandeer and control agencies of the federal government in a manner directly contrary to pre-existing statutory mandates and executive directives. However, what Alec L. does show is that advocates for greenhouse gas regulation, undiscouraged by their lack of reception at the Supreme Court earlier this year, will continue re-wrapping their claims to send them to more courts.

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