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 said an "endangerment" finding that was released in December by the agency was based on faulty science and would hurt Texas' economy.
"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."
The "endangerment" finding declared greenhouse gas emissions a threat to public health. This opened the way for the federal agency to seek limits on carbon dioxide emissions from automobiles, and to require power plants and manufacturers to install technology that reduces such emissions.
Al Armendariz, the regional administrator for the EPA, said he was not surprised by the lawsuit, which state officials filed with the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C.
He said he was confident that the "endangerment" finding, which was issued as a result of a 2007 U.S. Supreme Court decision, would withstand the state's legal challenge.
"Texas officials have repeatedly expressed opposition to the EPA's common-sense approach to begin reducing harmful greenhouse gases," Armendariz said in a statement.
Because Texas contributes up to 35 percent of the greenhouse gases emitted by industrial sources in the United States, the state should be leading the charge for reform, he said.
"Instead, Texas officials are attempting to slow progress with unnecessary litigation," Armendariz said.
State officials also plan to file a petition for reconsideration with the EPA, asking agency administrator Lisa Jackson to review her decision.
Abbott and Perry said the federal agency drew its information from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a group they described as neither objective nor trustworthy. The organization's data have come under fire from groups that are skeptical of global warming for some errors and irregularities.