Monday letters: Wilson is right to fight EPA

Frank Knapp’s Nov. 23 column criticizing Attorney General Alan Wilson’s opposition to President Obama’s burdensome power-plant regulations is off base.

Mr. Knapp ignores the legitimate legal question about the way the Environmental Protection Agency is proposing to regulate carbon-dioxide emissions from electric power plants. Even Lawrence Tribe, a renowned liberal Harvard constitutional law professor, has said the approach is unconstitutional.

The administration could have chosen to seek consensus with Congress instead of attempting to unilaterally cram broad energy directives into an air-permit regulation. By taking the latter approach, the EPA has been forced to use a highly questionable legal basis for its massive and costly new regulatory scheme.

The fact of the matter is that the federal government must operate within the law. In challenging the president’s go-it-alone approach, Mr. Wilson is standing up for the rule of law, and that is exactly what he was elected to do.

The Obama approach stands in sharp contrast to how South Carolina crafted new policy in 2014 for advancing the use of solar and renewable energy. Democrats and Republicans in the General Assembly worked together and alongside business and solar energy interests to forge a compromise.

Advocates for the president’s climate change agenda have every right to advocate policies to their liking, but their advocacy should not include asking the attorney general to ignore the law.