Download Amicus Brief Summary - Town of Chapel Hill

Amicus Brief Summary
Description of signatories
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51 city and county governments, representing diverse geographies, politics, economies and
demographics have joined in defense of the EPA’s Clean Power Plan.
These local governments come from 28 states and represent approximately 18 million Americans.
Twenty-three of the 51 local government signatories are in states that are suing to overturn the Clean
Power Plan.
Why cities matter to the debate about the Clean Power Plan
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With over 80 percent of Americans living urban areas, and even more working there, cities and
counties are responsible for understanding the risks to and planning for the wellbeing of the great
majority of Americans.
Because cities’ legal authority generally extends only as far as their state governments allow, cities’
climate change adaptation and mitigation efforts are highly sensitive to national policies like the Clean
Power Plan, which shape national markets, steer state action, and have the largest impact on
nationwide emissions.
Cities have little ability to regulate the circumstances imposed on them by the wider world. They rely
on national policies Clean Power Plan. Without the CPP and other nationwide clean air standards, cities
are ill equipped to mitigate the very real costs of climate change.
A world where the federal government further delays regulating greenhouse gases from the nation’s
largest source of emissions is one where the climate changes faster and to a greater degree, and thus
one where adaptation for cities costs more.
How climate change is already impacting cities
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Rising sea levels and warming global temperatures – as well as increasingly common and severe
extreme weather events – do costly damage to water, transportation, and electricity infrastructure, as
well as to human lives.
The cost of coastal storm damage is expected to climb from $3 billion to as high as $35 billion by the
2030s.
Flooding, propelled by rising sea levels, is swallowing cities like Miami Beach and infiltrating supplies of
potable water at alarming rates. Rising seas likewise put Miami at risk for “losing insurability.”
Climate change exacerbates heat waves – making related deaths and hospitalizations a tragic annual
event in cities like in Baltimore, Dallas, Evanston, and Minneapolis – and fuels wildfires – affecting
cities in the West like Boulder County, Eugene and Portland.
According to a peer-reviewed study called Climate Change in the United States, if the U.S. can maintain
a global warming average of 2 degrees Celsius—a goal of the CPP—cities will face 57,000 fewer
domestic deaths due to poor air quality; 12,000 fewer domestic deaths per year from extreme heat
and cold; an estimated $50 million to $6.4 billion in avoided annual adaptation costs from severe
precipitation; an estimated $3.1 billion in avoided annual damages and adaptation costs from sea level
rise and storm surge; and an estimated $32 million to $2.5 billion in avoided damages from inland
flooding.
The legal argument for the Clean Power Plan
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Based on the agency’s authority under Section 111(d) of the Clean Air Act, the EPA’s Clean Power Plan
regulates power plants’ carbon dioxide pollution, the nation’s single largest source of carbon pollution.
The U.S. Supreme Court has already ruled that EPA has the authority to limit carbon pollution from
power plants under the Clean Air Act. (Massachusetts v. EPA, 549 U.S. 497, 2007)
The intent of Congress in enacting the Clean Air Act was “to speed up, expand, and intensify the war
against pollution”— not to slow down, narrow and weaken it.
Interpreting the “best system of emission reduction” in the manner proposed by petitioners would
prevent EPA from requiring anything close to the emissions reductions achievable from these sources,
essentially erasing the word “best” from the statute.