(Bloomberg) — Republican lawmakers said the Natural
Resources Defense Council and other environmental groups had an
inappropriate influence on developing the Obama administration’s
regulation to curb carbon emissions from power plants.
The Environmental Protection Agency released the final rule
Monday, and it was hailed by NRDC and others as a major step
toward addressing the risks of global warming. The Senate
Environment and Public Works Committee on Tuesday released a
compilation of e-mails between the groups and administration
officials to show “collusion” in crafting the rule.
The e-mails “demonstrate how EPA and NRDC sought to push
the outer limits of EPA’s Clean Air Act authority and to develop
the analysis on which these highly controversial and legally
suspect rules are based,” according to the report released by
the committee’s Republican majority.
The NRDC released a proposal for how the EPA could tackle
carbon emissions from power plants in late 2012, after President
Barack Obama was re-elected. It was used as the basis for the
EPA’s carbon rule, according to the report.
“This is another attempt to stop us from standing up for
clean air, safe water and healthy communities — and strong
action to combat climate change,” Ed Chen, a spokesman for
NRDC, said in an e-mail. “We are doing nothing more than
petitioning our government — a constitutionally protected
right. That’s our job. The real wrong here is for anyone to
suggest we don’t have the right to do so.”
To contact the reporter on this story:
Mark Drajem in Washington at
To contact the editors responsible for this story:
Jon Morgan at
Steve Geimann, Elizabeth Wasserman