Public Citizen files suit to force Texas regulator to consider carbon dioxide emissions in permitting plants

摘要

Ubiquitous climate change must be considered when new coal plants and other facilities are approved, according to Public Citizen, an activist group that filed suit October 6 against the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) in the Travis County District Court. The suit would require the regulator to control gases associated with global warming. The case seeks to extend to Texas law the precedent set by the U.S. Supreme Court in Massachusetts v. EPA, which held that carbon dioxide is a pollutant under the federal Clean Air Act and that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) must regulate it.