It’s official. The Hill’s Energy and Environment blog reports that 46 House Republicans are introducing a bill to strip the Environmental Protection Agency of the ability to protect the environment by regulating carbon dioxide under the Clean Air Act.

With the Senate gridlocked for the past two years, and more gridlock in store with the newly-divided GOP/Tea Party Congress, no legislation on climate change or carbon regulation is going to be happening for a while. The only place any action on global warming could happen would be at the EPA level, which is why the friends of fossil fuels are going for the jugular.

Who’s on board

The sponsor of the bill (HR 97) at the Energy and Commerce Committee is Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn), which is interesting, since a bill of this importance would usually be introduced by the committee chair. That’s Fred Upton (R-Mich), who was once a cap-and-trader but now calls any regulation a job-killer. He’s said to be mulling options.

Also signing on as co-sponsors: firebrand Oversight and Government Committee chairDarrell Issa (R-Calif), and the lone Democrat in the pack, Oklahoma Blue Dog Dan Boren.

In the Senate, there was already an attempt to curb the EPA last year that failed narrowly. Some Democrats may again side with the GOP on this one, including West Virginia’s coal-country twins, Jay Rockefeller and Joe Manchin.

Who’s fighting back

Senator Barbara Boxer (D-Calif) is taking point on defense. She told Reporters today she will “use every single tool available” to block those efforts. What that would entail remains… er… up in the air.

It doesn’t look like there would be enough votes to end a filibuster in the Senate, but until the rules reform package is voted on in two weeks, we won’t know what form the filibuster will take.

Rather than stage a filibuster, it may make the most political sense to let this one go to a vote, giving conservadems the cover they crave.

As a last line of defense President Obama has promised a veto. There’s no way opponents can muster a 2/3 majority in the Senate to over-ride a veto.

So any vote, and any opposition, may just be symbolic posturing. Expect a lot of that over the next two years.

Background on the EPA and CO2:

As the CleanEnergy blog notes:

Far from being a “backdoor power grab” by the Obama Administration, the EPA is actually legally obligated, by both the Congress and the U.S. Supreme Court, to regulate pollutants that would endanger public health. A 2007 Supreme Court Ruling, Massachusetts vs. EPA, found that greenhouse gases fit within the law’s broad definition of air pollutants and directed the agency to determine whether these specific pollutants endanger public health. The resulting 2009 endangerment findings confirmed that, in fact, greenhouse gases do pose a risk to public health and began the process of crafting new standards to regulate these pollutants. Almost four years after the Supreme Court ruling, the first of these new standards, known as the Tailoring Rule, goes into effect this year (read more about these new standards in our detailed blogpost).

Which isn’t going to stop the friends of fossil fuel from calling this a job-killing power grab. And if they fail on this one, watch for them to try again… and again.

More on Climate Change and Global Warming from Red Green and Blue:

(Factory image Some rights reserved by Ben Reierson)