Texas AG Greg Abbott Grabs The Spotlight In Fight Against EPA's Tailpipe-Emissions Rule

Greg Abbott leads a mostly southern uprising

​Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott wants everyone to know that he is doing everything he can to stop the federal Environmental Protection Agency from trying to implement greenhouse-gas limits on cars and trucks.

In the latest of a series of lawsuits against the damn interferin' feds, Abbott announced today that on behalf of Texas and eight other states he had filed a lawsuit challenging the so-called "tailpipe" regulations scheduled to go into effect in 2016.

The filing, Abbott's office said, "asserts that the EPA's Tailpipe Rule is arbitrary and failed to comply with the Clean Air Act. EPA refused to consider the enormous costs that its regulations impose on businesses and consumers - despite provisions of the Clean Air Act that require the Administration to consider these costs."

Joining Texas are Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Carolina, South Dakota and Virginia. Take away the Dakotas and you've got the South rising again there.

Intervening in the suit on behalf of the EPA is California, Delaware, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhose Island, Vermont and Washington. A pretty blue collection, there.

Abbott's office quoted a former EPA administrator, Stephen Johnson, as saying the Tailpipe Rule results in an "unprecedented expansion of EPA authority" and has "a profound effect on virtually every sector of the economy and touch[es] every household in the land."

The suit is being heard in the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.