Editorial: Cutting carbon emissions up to lawmakers -- and us
By The Herald Editorial Board
Just one week into the 2020 legislative session, the state Supreme Court has added to state lawmakers’ to-do list for an already brief 60-day session.
Even before the court decision, legislators had bills before them — some held over from last year — addressing efforts to limit and begin cutting the greenhouse gas emissions causing climate change. But a decision Thursday from the court severely curtails the authority of the state Department of Ecology to set rules for carbon emissions — especially from the transportation sector that is the leading source of that pollution — and now puts the responsibility and urgency on the state Legislature.
The decision was close, 5-4, with the majority finding that the state’s Clean Air Rule did not explicitly give the agency the authority to limit emissions from indirect sources. The rule’s limits, the majority held, could not be applied to companies that sell or distribute petroleum or natural gas because they do not directly control those emissions; the motorists, homeowners and others who purchase fossil fuels do. The state agency only has the authority to regulate “actual emitters.”
It’s a narrow interpretation of statute and precedent, which the minority pointed to in Justice Susan Owen’s dissent: “We have historically found that when passing laws that protect Washington’s environmental interests, the Legislature intended those laws to be broadly construed [emphasis hers] to achieve the statute’s goals,” she wrote.
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