Colorado’s Republican Attorney General Cynthia Coffman has filed yet another lawsuit against the federal government. This time she’s suing the Environmental Protection Agency regarding its plan to implement federal standards law calling for a reduction in carbon-dioxide emissions: 28 percent in Colorado and 32 percent nationally by 2030. She states it’s her responsibility to “serve as a check against the abusive, unlawful exercise of federal power over the lives of Colorado’s citizens.”
I would prefer that she assume responsibility for the abusive, unlawful exercise of gas and oil industries’ power to pollute and contaminate Colorado’s air, earth and water, including a demand that oil and gas disclose what chemicals are used in fracturing.
Coffman is following a time-honored American tradition: litigate, litigate and litigate again. (She also has sued the Bureau of Land Management for proposing rules governing hydraulic fracturing). Coffman states that unilaterally suing the EPA and BLM, without consultation and permission from Gov. Hickenlooper, is in the “best interest of the state.”
She’s wrong. If Coffman wants to serve the best interest of the state, protecting our right to clean air, earth and water, she should be biased in support of every effort to reduce carbon-dioxide emissions and contamination from hydraulic fracturing.
Instead, Coffman’s lawsuits show us clearly where her bias really lies.
Mary Benson
Durango
