Chamber asks EPA to please reconsider

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce asked the EPA to reconsider its endangerment finding, the legal underpinning of the agency’s efforts to regulate greenhouse gases.

Steven Law, chief legal officer and general counsel of the Chamber, released a statement that said the business lobby believes the “right way” to lower greenhouse gas emissions is through "bipartisan legislation and comprehensive international agreements.”

“The EPA has admitted that such an unprecedented regulatory expansion would ‘paralyze’ and ‘overwhelm’ permitting authorities, leaving businesses waiting months or even years to get the permits they need to keep operating. This admission by the EPA undermines the basis for the endangerment finding, and justifies reopening the process,” the Chamber said in a statement.

It appears the strategy ignores the EPA’s effort to “tailor” its regulation to large emitters by raising the threshold for regulation to 25,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent a year. EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson has said the threshold could be significantly higher -- perhaps 100,000 metric tons -- during the initial phase of the program in response to complaints from Captiol Hill and also public comments submitted to the agency.

“The Chamber has long warned that regulating greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act would be bad for jobs and local economies. Last October, four months after the deadline for the public to submit comments on the endangerment finding, the Agency formally acknowledged the ‘absurdity’ of regulating greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act," the statement ads.