On March 31, 2011, Peter Glaser, Chair of Troutman Sanders’ climate change team, testified before the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, which held hearings entitled “Climate Change: Examining the Processes Used to Create Science and Policy.” The only lawyer to testify, Mr. Glaser addressed flaws in the process EPA used to adopt its greenhouse gas (GHG) endangerment finding. These flaws include failure to examine the benefits society receives by using fossil fuel for energy, EPA prejudging the endangerment finding by committing to GHG regulation even before the endangerment finding was proposed, overly relying on work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and then failing to reconsider that reliance when the climategate scandal emerged, and other flaws.
The endangerment finding and EPA’s GHG regulations that followed that finding are now on appeal before the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, with the first round of briefing scheduled to commence on May 20.
A one-page summary of Mr. Glaser’s testimony can be found here, and the full testimony may be found here.