Introduction

Abstract

This book, Combating Climate Change with Section 115 of the Clean Air Act, sets forth a comprehensive assessment of how one statutory provision – Section 115 of the Clean Air Act, “International Air Pollution” – provides the executive branch of the U.S. government with the authority, procedures, and mechanisms to work with the states to take national climate action. The book grows out of an earlier collaborative effort, involving many of our contributing writers, that culminated in publication of an article, Legal Pathways to Reducing Greenhouse Gas Emissions under Section 115 of the Clean Air Act, in the Georgetown Environmental Law Journal, in 2016. In that article, we concluded that regulation of GHG emissions under Section 115 is legal because the provision applies to GHG emissions and the prerequisites for invoking the provision – foreign endangerment and reciprocity – are satisfied. We also concluded that regulation of GHG emissions under Section 115 is good policy both because EPA and the states can use market mechanisms and obviate the need for multiple sector-by-sector regulations and because EPA can tie action under the provision to the national goal set forth by the U.S. in its Paris Agreement commitments. In this book, we make important adjustments and updates to the thinking in that piece to reflect all that has happened in the intervening years – including developments in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the U.S. Supreme Court, and U.S. politics. We also dive deeper into the key implementation issues EPA and the states would need to address. But the analysis is consistent, and the conclusion is ultimately the same: although Section 115 is not the only existing authority a future president and EPA administrator can, should, or will rely on to address climate change, it is a powerful one, with clear advantages for the federal government, the states, and the private sector. This chapter provides an Introduction to the book, and an overview of the analyses in the chapters that follow.