U.S. sides with utilities in court case

WASHINGTON, Aug. 27 (UPI) -- U.S. environmental activists say they're angry at the Obama administration for siding with utility companies in a Supreme Court case on climate change.

The case dates to 2004, when eight state governments and other plaintiffs sued the Tennessee Valley Authority and five other utilities burning fossil fuels to generate electricity, saying the utilities' greenhouse emissions posed a "public nuisance" because they contributed to climate change, The Washington Post reported Friday.

They asked the court to order the utilities to reduce emissions "by a specified percentage each year for at least a decade."

The case ended up in the Supreme Court, where the administration argued that the EPA has been taking "a series of regulatory actions indicating that it's moving forward on greenhouse gases and really making it inappropriate for the courts to step in and take on this issue."

The administration's stand disappointed environmentalists.

"We're very angry and very disappointed that they would take this tack," said David Doniger, policy director of the climate center at the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Representatives of the utilities industry said the administration was correct in its arguments.

"We're certainly happy with it," Bill Fang, deputy general counsel for the Edison Electric Institute, said. "The fact that they've taken this position is significant. They could have stayed silent. The fact that they've spoken out is significant, and we're happy about it."

Administration officials said their brief on behalf of TVA did not mean an about-face on policy.

"It would be inappropriate to read too much about the administration's policy based on this narrow litigation," an administration official said.