Oops! Limiting EPA's ability to impose CO2 regs exposes Big Coal to lawsuits

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"The Supreme Court will hear challenges by America's biggest power companies to a landmark appeals court ruling in Connecticut v. American Electric Power that they can be sued to curb their emissions of carbon dioxide, the main cause of global warming.

Four coal-burning power companies – American Electric Power, Southern Company, Duke Energy, and Xcel Energy – want the Supreme Court to shut the courthouse doors on federal “nuisance” suits to curb carbon pollution. The Solicitor General, representing the Tennessee Valley Authority, says that states and others hurt by companies’ carbon pollution should be forced wait for the possibility that EPA may someday curb those emissions under the Clean Air Act.

The appeals court, however, relying on a century of Supreme Court precedents on states’ rights to relief from interstate air and water pollution, held that federal courts can curb the companies’ carbon pollution unless and until the EPA actually regulates the emissions from their existing power plants."

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