. @EPAAWheeler unveiled the methane rule rollback in Pittsburgh yesterday. Gracias to @NewsHour for putting it online.

Wheeler was asked about @EnvDefenseFund's stated plan to sue and his response was interesting. Here's his full response; thoughts in thread 1/9

His remark praising @ceidotorg (not by name) stood out. He praised CEI for taking time to decide whether to sue over ACE (it argues that EPA shouldn't regulate GHGs at all). And he in turn chastised green groups for immediately announcing lawsuits over methane. 2/

You know what CEI was the first to sue over? Wheeler's SAFE Vehicles rule, this spring, the day it was in the Federal Register. CEI filed the first lawsuit on Day 1, arguing that the rule is far to stringent. California and green groups waited another 27 days to sue. 3/

But let's go back to when the sides were reversed: The Clean Power Plan release, Aug. 3, 2015. Guess who said they'd sue even before Obama released the plan? Murray Energy, for whom Wheeler at the time was a lobbyist (he didn't represent them in the suit though). 4/

Someone else who immediately that day said he would sue: Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt. 5/

So did the National Mining Association. So did West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey. And I'm sure others did as well. 6/

Could EDF have read the 400+ pages of regulatory text before announcing plans to sue over methane? No.

Nor could Murray et al on CPP. Ironically, one of the legal arguments was that it was too different from the proposed version, which required a time-consuming comparison. 7/

But EDF had 1-2 years to digest the proposed versions of the methane rollback, from which the big takeaways — rescission of methane limits, delisting of transmission and storage, easing LDAR frequency — remained the same. 8/

These "knee-jerk" lawsuits, whether filed by industry or enviros, show just how far apart America is on the environment and regulation. There's zero room for agreement, so EPA has a 100% lawsuit rate on major air rules. And that's probably going to be true for a while. 9/9