Connecticut Attorney General William Tong and New York Attorney General Letitia James have joined a coalition of 22 states and seven municipal governments in a lawsuit seeking to block the implementation of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) new Affordable Clean Energy rule.
The Affordable Clean Energy rule replaces the Obama-era Clean Power Plan, which was designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from power plants and cut power sector emissions to 32 percent below 2005 levels by 2030. The EPA, which finalized the new rule in June, said that it will provide states a greater degree of time and authority to determine how they can ease net emissions from coal-fired plants. The attorneys general dubbed the new rule “Dirty Power” and accused the EPA of enabling fossil-fuel power plants and their polluting emissions.
“I believe in science,” Tong said. “Climate change is real and if we do nothing to curb our reliance on fossil fuels we are dooming future generations and our planet. The ‘Dirty Power’ rule is a craven, political attempt to protect Trump’s toxic allies in the fossil-fuel industry from the change we all know is urgently required. Trump and his Big Pollution friends need to stop prolonging this inevitable shift, and start truly investing in clean, renewable and affordable power.”
“The science is indisputable: our climate is changing,” James said. “Ice caps are melting. Sea levels are rising. Weather is becoming more and more extreme. Without significant course correction, we are careening towards a climate disaster. Rather than staying the course with policies aimed at fixing the problem and protecting people”™s health, safety, and the environment, the Trump administration repealed the Clean Power Plan and replaced it with this ”˜Dirty Power”™ rule. My office, and this groundbreaking coalition of states and cities from across the nation, will fight back against this unlawful, do-nothing rule in order to protect our future from catastrophic climate change.”
