Green Building Law Blog : Green Building Lawyer & Attorney : Shari Shapiro: Calliope Communications, LLC

There have been memorable social marketing campaigns over the years--Smokey the Bear, the sizzling egg that is your brain on drugs and the coining of “Obamacare” come to mind. Now Grist reports that Martin Glaser, the advertising genius that came up with the "I Heart New York" logo, has turned his communications brilliance to Climate Change.  

As I said in my earlier post on the importance of communications to public policy, Madison-avenue style marketing should not be reserved for toothpaste and cell phone plans.  Policy, like anything else, needs to be sold to the public in order to be accepted and effective.

The slogan is "It's not warming.  It's dying." You can see the campaign here.  I like the slogan, it captures the urgency.  But more than the slogan, I like the graphic of a green circle being overcome by a black shadow.  I think it is quite effective. 

If Madison Avenue can get Americans to believe that 4 out of 5 dentists agree that sugar free gum is good for you, then hopefully Martin Glaser can improve Yale's survey finding that "only one in three Americans thinks people in the U.S. are being harmed “right now” by global warming in the United States." 

I am giving away a "It's Not Warming, It's Dying" to the first 5 people that Tweet this post! 

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There have been memorable social marketing campaigns over the years--Smokey the Bear, the sizzling egg that is your brain on drugs and the coining of “Obamacare” come to mind. Now Grist reports that Martin Glaser, the advertising genius that came up with the "I Heart New York" logo, has turned his communications brilliance to Climate Change.  

As I said in my earlier post on the importance of communications to public policy, Madison-avenue style marketing should not be reserved for toothpaste and cell phone plans.  Policy, like anything else, needs to be sold to the public in order to be accepted and effective.

The slogan is "It's not warming.  It's dying." You can see the campaign here.  I like the slogan, it captures the urgency.  But more than the slogan, I like the graphic of a green circle being overcome by a black shadow.  I think it is quite effective. 

If Madison Avenue can get Americans to believe that 4 out of 5 dentists agree that sugar free gum is good for you, then hopefully Martin Glaser can improve Yale's survey finding that "only one in three Americans thinks people in the U.S. are being harmed “right now” by global warming in the United States." 

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It was inevitable that EPA's Clean Power Plan, regulating carbon emissions from existing power plants was going to generate law suits.  Even if the suits are ultimately unsuccessful, an injunction against the Plan's adoption or implementation may slow or stop the EPA's ability to move forward for years. The wheels of justice grind slowly, after all.  

The first of these actions was filed on June 18 by Murray Energy, the largest privately owned coal company in the country (the complaint can be downloaded here). Murray alleged that EPA had exceeded its statutory authority under the Clean Air Act, and asked the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals to stop the EPA from enacting the Clean Power Plan regulation.  A week or so later nine states — West Virginia, Wyoming, South Carolina, Ohio, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Alaska, Alabama, and Kentucky —petitioned to join the Murray Energy suit.

In essence, Murray is claiming that EPA and the states cannot double regulate power plants.  Certain specific "Hazardous Air Pollutants" from power plants are already regulated at the Federal level under Section 112 of the CAA.  Murray's argument is that Section 111(d), which allows state plans for regulation of emissions, only applies to sources that are not regulated under 112.  to interpret it otherwise would be to allow double, and potentially conflicting, regulation of the same sources.   

I wish I could say that the suit has no merit, but I cannot.  It is a close question, which is well analyzed here by Robert Nordhaus and Ilan Gutherz at the Environmental Law Institute.  My opinion is that EPA's authority to regulate will be upheld.  

However, the recent Supreme Court decision in Utility Regulatory Group v. EPA makes me wonder whether off-site energy efficiency programs and cap-and-trade protocols will be allowed as control technologies.  In the Utility Regulatory Group decision, Scalia all but invited a follow-up suit on the control technologies EPA chooses to implement its regulations, particularly energy efficiency:

We acknowledge the potential for greenhouse-gas BACT to lead to an unreasonable and unanticipated degree of regulation, and our decision should not be taken as an endorsement of all aspects of EPA’s current approach, no ras a free rein for any future regulatory application of BACT in this distinct context.

Regardless of the outcome of the suit, it simply should not be this hard to regular carbon.  EPA has been forced to take a challenging path to regulation because Congress has refused to act directly on this critical issue.  

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