Congress must streamline federal environmental regulations and preempt state laws, or the nation’s energy producers will continue to be handicapped by climate-related litigation often sponsored by foreign financiers, including—some alleged in a recent Senate hearing—by the Chinese Communist Party.
Acknowledging he’s a “strong opponent” of preemption—when a higher level of government precludes, or “preempts,” actions by those below—Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach said the matrix of federal, state, and local environmental legislation adopted since the 1970s is ripe for litigative exploitation.
“Congress should preempt state laws, and courts should read between the lines of congressional statutes to find preemption,” Kobach said during a June 25 hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Federal Courts, Oversight, Agency Action and Federal Rights Subcommittee....
