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Joining Big Coal, 24 States Have Teamed UP to Fight Obama's Climate Change Plan

Twenty-four states are turning on President Barack Obama’s ambitious plan to curtail carbon pollution from power plants.
Kayford Mountain, West Virginia. Image: Kate Wellington/Flickr

Twenty-four states are turning on President Barack Obama's ambitious plan to curtail carbon pollution from power plants.

On Friday, the states filed a lawsuit in federal court in Washington, DC, meant to challenge the President's climate change plan. The challenge was accompanied by other suits from the coal mining giant Murray Energy Corp and the National Mining Association, a coal lobbying group. The suits claim that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) overreached the bounds of its authority by demanding that states lower the amount of carbon pollution they emit. West Virginia is leading the opposition, which also includes Texas, Virginia, Alabama and New Jersey.

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The news comes in the wake of the Clean Power Plan, which the president released details for on Friday. The regulations, which are in place now, are considered a staple of the White House's climate change plan and force states to reduce their carbon emissions from power plants by nearly a third from 2005 levels. They also may require states with exceptionally high coal plant emissions to shut down some plants so that they don't exceed their limit, and to instead integrate renewable, cleaner energy sources. States have until the year 2022 to begin showing pollution reductions. The administration hopes that the plan will cut power plant emissions by 32 percent by 2030.

Even with seven years of leeway, coal companies and states aren't having the new rules.

"The immediacy of substantial harm from this power plant rule is plain from EPA's own data that show it will cause more than 200 coal-fired power plants to close before courts have time to decide the legality of the rule," Hal Quinn, president of the National Mining Association, said in a statement.

The EPA, for its part, isn't so worried about the suits. EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy said that the agency was prepared to defend the plan.

"The Clean Power Plan has strong scientific and legal foundations, provides states with broad flexibilities to design and implement plans, and is clearly within EPA's authority under the Clean Air Act," she said in a statement.

The coal rule is likely to stay in place for the time being, a fact that environmentalists have applauded. Liz Perera, climate policy director for the Sierra Club, even called it "the most significant action a president has ever taken on climate change."