Biden’s Department of Transportation Targets Car CO2 Emissions on Highways to Boost Electric Vehicles – Increase By That?
It looks like the Biden administration could use a lesson in American Citizenship.
A week after the US Supreme Court ruled that the Environmental Protection Agency cannot regulate carbon dioxide emissions from power plants because it lacks congressional authorization to do so, The Biden Department of Transportation (DOT) has proposed a rule targeting CO2 emissions from highway vehicles, over which the DOT also has no legal authority.
DOT’s Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) is proposing a rule that would require states and municipalities to “monitor and reduce greenhouse gas emissions on their highways.” In keeping with a longstanding misleading regulatory tradition, the DOT assured the public that the “carbon reduction program” in the rule would be “flexible,” allowing state DOTs and planning organizations municipality (MPO) “sets its own goals. That flexibility quickly disappeared, however, as the DOT added that the diminution goals must “match” with the Biden administration’s “zero goal” as outlined in the two executive orders and pledges. The results were made at the Climate Summit of International Leaders.
The plan for state DOTs and urban planning organizations to set ever-decreasing targets for vehicle emissions on the road has no basis in law. Congress has never directed the DOT to take any such steps. Most recently, several provisions in last year’s bipartisan infrastructure bill established a number of CO2 emission reduction programs at the DOT. But nowhere in that law is the DOT authorized to require vehicle emissions targets, much less targets that serve any “net-zero” goal.
In the Supreme Court’s decision in West Virginia v. EPA, the Supreme Court ruled that the EPA lacked statutory authority to regulate CO2 emissions from power plants. The same legal principle applies here. The DOT’s proposed rule would trigger lawsuits arguing that the Biden administration’s actions violate the separation of powers that the courts uphold. West Virginia v. EPA. Citing that precedent, the plaintiffs will say officials of the executive branch of DOT acted unconstitutionally by assuming powers that only the legislative branch could grant. If the case goes to the Supreme Court (and that could take years), and if that body is established as it is, the DOT’s takeover of power will likely go according to the Obama/Biden plan. aimed at regulating CO2 emissions from power plants.
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