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In case you missed it…

The culmination of September and the start of October have been action-packed for Public Citizen. This week we pushed to make the state of Texas realize that climate change must be considered when new coal plants and other facilities are approved. On Tuesday, Public Citizen sued the Texas Comission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) to require the commission to regulate global warming gasses. As explained in several media outlets including the Philadelphia Inquirer, the lawsuit seeks to extend to Texas law the precedent set in a lawsuit by 12 states against the Bush administration in 2007. In that case, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that carbon dioxide is a pollutant under the federal Clean Air Act and that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) must regulate it. In a statement we released, Tom “Smitty” Smith, the director of our Texas office drove home just how serious this issue is.

“Texas leads the nation in the emissions of global warming gases. If we were a nation, we would rank seventh in emissions among the countries on earth. The time has come for the TCEQ to take its head out of the sand and begin the process to regulate CO2 emissions from Texas sources. Because the agency will not do so on its own, we are seeking to have a Texas court order it to do so.”

This lawsuit comes at a critical time as Congress begins to consider unprecedented legislation that would regulate man-made greenhouse gases.

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