Georgia senators have likely put off for another year a bill to fight President Obama's climate change plans, essentially taking a wait-and-see approach as the state pursues an already filed legal challenge.
State Sen. Charlie Bethel, R-Dalton, filed Senate Bill 311 earlier this week, proposing to include Georgia in a so-called Interstate Power Compact to thwart guidelines issued last summer by the Environmental Protection Agency.
Those federal guidelines require states to dramatically reduce carbon dioxide emissions, but Bethel suggested that states themselves should be able to craft their own less dramatic “carbon reduction plans based on achievable outcomes within existing power plants” before sending them to Washington.
On Thursday, however, state Sen. Frank Ginn, R-Danielsville, rebuffed the bill, saying the issue needed more vetting before lawmakers pursued it. Instead, Ginn — the chairman of the Senate Natural Resources and the Environment Committee — has asked for a study committee to look at it further, adding that "this legislation will probably come back to us next term."
Georgia joined two dozen other states last November in a lawsuit blocking the EPA’s new standards. Georgia had previously sued, along with other mostly Republican states, to halt Obama’s Clean Power Plan which mandates steep reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.
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