Justice Dept. Buries Social Cost of Carbon Maneuver on a Saturday Night

​DENVER – In response to the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) Saturday night filing asking the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana to stay the decision overturning the arbitrary use of the Social Cost of Carbon (SCC), Western Energy Alliance today issued the below statement attributable to Alliance president Kathleen Sgamma. In its filing, DOJ states that “work surrounding public-facing rules, grants, leases, permits and other projects has been delayed or stopped altogether so that agencies can assess whether and how they can proceed.”
 
“The Biden Administration’s action takes burying controversial news when nobody’s watching to a whole new level: usually it’s a late Friday evening release, not a Saturday night. When a government tries to overstep its legal authority on multiple levels, it must engage in such desperate moves.

​“The use of the SCC is novel and requires full administrative procedures to be used, not the short cuts a judge has blocked the administration from taking. Asking the court to let the government continue to use something that isn’t supported by law and hasn’t gone through rulemaking is like asking a police officer to enforce a law that hasn’t been passed yet.
 
“To compound the legal gymnastics, the Department of the Interior refuses to hold lease sales until the dust settles on the SCC. Officials are hoping to stall long enough to use the SCC to justify not leasing. But the legal maneuvering means the department is now violating actual law on the books. It’s now been five quarters that the Interior Department has failed to hold quarterly lease sales as required by the Mineral Leasing Act. We’re making sure the Wyoming District knows of the continued machinations and hope he rules soon in our case against the continued Biden ban on leasing.”

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