SC attorney general joins fight against Biden’s recent climate change order
South Carolina’s Alan Wilson is among 12 Republican attorneys general who have sued Democratic President Joe Biden for taking action that could eventually lead to tighter controls on greenhouse gas pollution.
Wilson says an executive order Biden signed two months ago regarding the social cost of greenhouse gases could hurt South Carolina’s economy with undue regulation and job losses in key industrial sectors.
Greenhouse gas pollution is causing the earth’s climate to grow warmer, an issue that has an array of public health and environmental consequences.
Wilson, a loyal Republican who was involved in suits against Democratic President Barack Obama’s administration, said people who work in manufacturing, agriculture or energy production “could be left in the dust’’ by onerous federal regulations under the Biden administration.
In a news release Tuesday, Wilson said “ this massive expansion of federal regulatory power has the potential to impact nearly every household in this state.’’
A leading air pollution expert called the suit a frivolous effort to use the courts for political purposes. The suit is legally shaky, said John Walke, who tracks air pollution and carbon issues for the Natural Resources Defense Council in Washington, D.C.
Walke, who is from South Carolina, said the suit is the first of what’s expected to be a series of legal actions by Republican states against environmental rules and regulations to limit pollution that worsens climate change.
“This is the first shot at the dove shoot under the new administration,’’ Walke said. “They want to be frequent, litigious critics of the Biden administration, and they decided to pick the first fight over the social cost of greenhouse gases.’’
At issue is an executive order Biden signed that tells federal agencies to look at the social cost of greenhouse gas pollution. Once a cost is established, the information is expected to help guide the federal government on what regulations should be adopted to address climate change.
The social cost of carbon emissions was about $50 per metric ton under former President Barack Obama, a Democrat, but was about $7 under Republican President Trump, The Salt Lake Tribune reported.
Walke said the lawsuit is challenging an executive order that hasn’t caused harm to anybody, meaning the courts won’t pay serious attention to it. The Biden executive order is simply a way to guide decisions in the future, he said.
“The executive order has no immediate impacts to anyone whatsoever,’’ Walke said. “There is no legal ‘there there’ to challenge.’’
Climate change — driven by rising greenhouse gases from industrialization — is a threat across the country, and nowhere has that been felt more than in South Carolina.
The state has been inundated with hurricane-driven floods since 2015, as well as routine flooding from heavy rains this winter. Scientific research suggests more powerful and soaking storms are a result of the earth’s changing climate.
Researchers also are finding an array of health-related problems they say are tied to rising sea levels, frequent flooding and hotter temperatures. Those include toxic flesh-eating microbes that threaten swimmers along the Carolina coast, as well as increasing mold outbreaks that are affecting health in poor communities.
In Tuesday’s news release, Wilson outlined what he said would be a painful economic impact from Biden’s climate change effort. The Republican attorneys general say Biden did not have the authority to issue the executive order.
“The potential stringency of federal regulations that could come from this executive order will stifle manufacturing, harm agriculture, and have serious economic impact across the country,’’ Wilson’s office said in a news release Tuesday.
The news release went on to say that the social cost of carbon could approach $10 trillion under Biden’s executive order, a figure not everyone agrees with.
“This enormous figure will be used to justify an equally enormous expansion of federal regulatory power that will intrude into every aspect of Americans’ lives — from their cars, to their refrigerators and homes, to their grocery and electric bills,’’ the release said, quoting this week’s lawsuit. “It will be used to inflict untold billions or trillions of dollars of damage to the U.S. economy for decades to come.’’
The lawsuit Wilson joined isn’t his first to challenge environmental regulations. During the Obama administration, he joined other attorneys general in suing to block climate change regulations.
His environmental track record has been a mixed bag.
Wilson, the son of Republican U.S. Rep Joe Wilson of Lexington, came out against offshore oil drilling, following opposition by Republican Gov. Henry McMaster and citizen groups. This past fall, he announced an agreement with the federal government to pay South Carolina more than $500 million for failure by the U.S. Department of Energy to remove plutonium from SRS, as promised. The plutonium, a deadly component in nuclear bombs, will eventually be removed.
Aside from the environment, Wilson joined 16 other states this year in seeking to overturn the results of the November presidential election won by Biden.
This story was originally published March 9, 2021 at 6:24 PM.
