Washington (CNN)
Greenhouse gas emissions pose a threat to public health and welfare, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson said Monday. “The overwhelming amount of scientific studies show that the threat is real,”
The announcement stems from a Supreme Court ruling which ordered the agency to determine the impact of carbon emissions not only on the environment, but on public health.
“These long-overdue findings cement 2009’s place in history as the year when the United States government began addressing the challenge of greenhouse-gas pollution and seizing the opportunity of clean energy reform,” Jackson said.
Jackson said carbon dioxide emissions go beyond damaging the environment — they also endanger public health.
The agency made the announcement because it is required to issue an “endangerment finding” — evidence that carbon emissions are dangerous to the public health — before it can regulate carbon dioxide and five other greenhouse gases under the federal Clean Air Act.
Immediately after the announcement, Jackson was leaving for Copenhagen, Denmark, to participate in the Copenhagen Climate Conference ahead of President Obama’s appearance at the end of the week.
“The U.S. is telling the international community we will act even if Congress doesn’t get its act together,” says David Bookbinder of the Sierra Club in Washington, D.C., a member of the legal team that won a 2007 Supreme Court decision that said greenhouse gases are pollutants and subject to Clean Air Act regulation. The ruling required the EPA to decide if global warming threatens human health and if so, to start controlling the emissions.
EPA: Greenhouse gases are harmful to humans
Announcement comes as Obama prepares to attend climate conference
AP : Mon., Dec . 7, 2009
The Obama administration has announced that rather than wait for Congress to act, it has authorized the Environmental Protection Agency to move forward on enacting new regulations on greenhouse gas emissions emitted from hundreds of power plants and large industrial facilities.
WASHINGTON – The Environmental Protection Agency took a major step Monday toward regulating greenhouses gases, concluding that climate changing pollution threatens the public health and the environment.
The announcement came as the Obama administration looked to boost its arguments at an international climate conference that the United States is aggressively taking actions to combat global warming, even though Congress has yet to act on climate legislation. The conference opened Monday in Copenhagen.
The EPA said that the scientific evidence surrounding climate change clearly shows that greenhouse gases “threaten the public health and welfare of the American people” and that the pollutants – mainly carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels – should be regulated under the Clean Air Act.
“These long-overdue findings cement 2009’s place in history as the year when the United States government began addressing the challenge of greenhouse-gas pollution,” said EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson at news conference.
The action by the EPA, which has been anticipated for months, clearly was timed to add to the momentum toward some sort of agreement on climate change at the Copenhagen conference and try to push Congress to approve climate legislation.
“This is a clear message to Copenhagen of the Obama administration’s commitments to address global climate change,” said Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., lead author of a climate bill before the Senate. “The message to Congress is crystal clear: get moving.”
Obama planned to talk with former Vice President Al Gore at the White House on Monday as the president prepares for his appearance on Dec. 18 at the climate summit in Copenhagen. Gore won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007 for his work toward combating climate change.
Obama is also meeting on Wednesday with environmental leaders and U.S. business leaders to discuss climate change.
Under a Supreme Court ruling, the finding of endangerment is needed before the EPA can regulate carbon dioxide and five other greenhouse gases released from power plants, factories and automobiles under the federal Clean Air Act.
The EPA signaled last April that it was inclined to view heat-trapping pollution as a threat to public health and welfare and began to take public comments under a formal rulemaking. The action marked a reversal from the Bush administration, which had declined to aggressively pursue the issue.
Business groups have strongly argued against tackling global warming through the Clean Air Act, saying it is less flexible and more costly than the cap-and-trade bill being considered before Congress. On Monday, some of those groups questioned the timing of the EPA’s announcement, calling it political.
“The implications of today’s action by EPA are far-reaching … individual Americans and consumers and businesses alike will be dramatically affected by this decision,” said Charles T. Drevna, the president of the National Petrochemical & Refiners Association. Drevna, in a statement, said “it is hardly the time to risk the remainder of the U.S. industrial sector in an attempt to achieve a short-term international public relations victory.”
Waiting for Congress to act
Any regulations are also likely to spawn lawsuits and lengthy legal fights.
The EPA and the White House have said regulations on greenhouse gases will not be imminent even after an endangerment finding, saying that the administration would prefer that Congress act to limit such pollution through an economy-wide cap on carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.
Nevertheless, the EPA has begun the early stages of developing permit requirements on carbon dioxide pollution from large emitters such as power plants. The administration also has said it will require automobile fuel economy to increase to a fleet average of 35 miles per gallon by 2016, another push to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.
The EPA’s readiness to tackle climate change is expected to give a boost to U.S. arguments at the climate conference opening in Copenhagen this week that the United States is making broad commitments to reduce greenhouse gases.
While the House has approved climate legislation that would cut emissions by 17 percent by 2020 and about 80 percent by mid-century, the Senate has yet to take up the measure amid strong Republican opposition and reluctance by some centrist Democrats.
Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., lead author of the Senate bill, has argued that if Congress doesn’t act, the EPA will require greenhouse gas emissions. He has called EPA regulation a “blunt instrument” that would pose a bigger problem for industry than legislation crafted to mitigate some of the costs of shifting away from carbon emitting fossil fuels.
The way was opened for the EPA to use the Clean Air Act to cut climate-changing emissions by the Supreme Court in 2007, when the court declared that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are pollutants under the Act. But the court said the EPA must determine if these pollutants pose a danger to public health and welfare before it can regulate them.
Endangerment and Cause or Contribute Findings for Greenhouse Gases under the Clean Air Act
EPA : Action
On December 7, 2009, the Administrator signed two distinct findings regarding greenhouse gases under section 202(a) of the Clean Air Act:
* Endangerment Finding: The Administrator finds that the current and projected concentrations of the six key well-mixed greenhouse gases–carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O), hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), perfluorocarbons (PFCs), and sulfur hexafluoride (SF6)–in the atmosphere threaten the public health and welfare of current and future generations.
* Cause or Contribute Finding: The Administrator finds that the combined emissions of these well-mixed greenhouse gases from new motor vehicles and new motor vehicle engines contribute to the greenhouse gas pollution which threatens public health and welfare.
These findings do not themselves impose any requirements on industry or other entities. However, this action is a prerequisite to finalizing the EPA’s proposed greenhouse gas emission standards for light-duty vehicles, which were jointly proposed by EPA and the Department of Transportation’s National Highway Safety Administration on September 15, 2009.
Background
On April 2, 2007, in Massachusetts v. EPA, 549 U.S. 497 (2007), the Supreme Court found that greenhouse gases are air pollutants covered by the Clean Air Act. The Court held that the Administrator must determine whether or not emissions of greenhouse gases from new motor vehicles cause or contribute to air pollution which may reasonably be anticipated to endanger public health or welfare, or whether the science is too uncertain to make a reasoned decision. In making these decisions, the Administrator is required to follow the language of section 202(a) of the Clean Air Act. The Supreme Court decision resulted from a petition for rule making under section 202(a) filed by more than a dozen environmental, renewable energy, and other organizations.
On April 17, 2009, the Administrator signed proposed endangerment and cause or contribute findings for greenhouse gases under Section 202(a) of the Clean Air Act. EPA held a 60-day public comment period, which ended June 23, 2009, and received over 380,000 public comments. These included both written comments as well as testimony at two public hearings in Arlington, Virginia and Seattle, Washington. EPA carefully reviewed, considered, and incorporated public comments and has now issued these final Findings.
States left wondering about EPA’s greenhouse gas ruling
17 Apr 2009 : by Janet Wilson
I watched the head of the Environmental Protection Administration shake hands with Mickey Mouse after the two had hoisted a compact fluorescent light bulb for a Disneyland photo op. I’d been promised a sit-down interview with Stephen Johnson, the career EPA staffer tapped by George W. Bush in 2005 to run the agency, but his handlers evidently thought better of it, and reneged.
Instead, they gave me a few minutes to sprint alongside Johnson as he headed out of the Magic Kingdom. I asked him when he would respond to an April 2007 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that compelled the EPA to decide whether greenhouse gases were endangering the public, and ordering the agency to act if there was a risk. That could include allowing California and other states to move forward on tough laws requiring recalcitrant automakers to slash greenhouse gas emissions. All that was needed was his signature waiving the states from having to wait for national action. Similar waivers on air pollution regulations have been granted for decades.
Johnson, a genial, unfailingly polite man (whether shaking hands with an oversized mouse or being accosted by a Los Angeles Times reporter), said he had ordered his staff to respond to the Supreme Court with an national emission plan that was even better than the states’ by the end of 2007. He said he was extremely proud of how hard they were working to get it done. Then he was off for the first leg of a Sony-funded, cross-country tour promoting the aforementioned light bulbs as a bright idea for slowing global warming.
Back in D.C., EPA career staffers were indeed pulling long nights and weekends to finish a comprehensive plan. That December they presented it to their boss and the White House. The report concluded that greenhouse gases were in fact a danger, that a national plan was needed, and that California and the other states should be allowed to act.
Johnson’s response? “He froze us out,” said one exhausted, frustrated staffer I tracked down in a late night phone call at the time. In an Orwellian series of phone calls and e-mails, White House staffers also refused to acknowledge to me that they’d received any such document from the EPA. If they had confirmed it publicly, it would have set in motion the process requiring the federal government to act. Weeks later, Johnson denied California’s waiver request.
Last July Johnson went further, saying that despite the high court’s order, the Clean Air Act was “the wrong tool for addressing greenhouse gases” because it would be too costly for the American public, and that Congress should pass legislation to tackle the issue.
By engaging in such Mickey Mouse stunts, Johnson broke his word to his own staff and the American public.
Today, his successor, Lisa Jackson, partly reversed course, announcing that the EPA had in fact concluded that mounting greenhouse gases pose a serious threat. In the accompanying report, agency staff again laid out a frightening litany of possible dangers: increased heat waves that would likely fell the elderly, the very young and the chronically ill, increases in ozone smog that would add to respiratory infection, asthma and premature death, more severe coastal hurricanes, and other devastating impacts.
The report also explicitly tied motor vehicle emissions to climate change. But there was no mention of allowing California or more than a dozen other states to move forward promptly with their long languishing laws. Quite the opposite.
In a briefing with Senate staff Friday before the announcement, Jackson’s new climate change adviser, who led the charge for Massachusetts in the Supreme Court case, said the legal underpinning for granting the states’ waivers had nothing to do with finding a danger from greenhouse gases. Sierra Club attorney David Bookbinder and California Air Resources Board chair Mary Nichols both said the same thing. “We are delighted” by Jackson’s decision, said Nichols. “And it has no bearing on the California waiver decision, there’s no connection.”
That doesn’t quite jibe with what environmental attorneys and California regulators were saying a year ago, and it’s not clear why. Possibly Jackson intends to finally approve California’s waiver and let it and other states proceed with concrete action to tackle greenhouse gases, and she doesn’t want some new legal finding to delay that. In fact Congress slipped a little noticed June 30 deadline for her to either grant or deny California’s waiver request into this year’s omnibus budget act.
But perhaps there’s no public mention of the states’ emissions laws because she and the new president don’t want to face the heat from irate automakers and business interests, preferring to leave it to Congress to do the dirty work on climate change. Indeed, Jackson and Obama are sounding curiously like their predecessors, Bush and Johnson, wanting to punt to Congress to take action.
As today’s EPA press release concluded, in classic government verbosity, “Notwithstanding this required regulatory process, both President Obama and Administrator Jackson have repeatedly indicated their preference for comprehensive legislation to address this issue.”
Furious jockeying will begin in earnest next week over climate change legislation proposed by Reps. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) and Ed Markey (D-Mass.). Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has promised the House will pass a bill by Memorial Day. But even the most optimistic observers say it will be a steep climb to meet that deadline.
This afternoon, there is Beltway chatter about harmonizing states’ climate laws creatively with a national automobile regulation, with both included in the Waxman-Markey bill. There is also brave talk of the regulatory process marching onward no matter what happens in Congress.
There is no talk of promptly granting the states’ waivers.
In the meantime, an estimated 7 billion tons of greenhouse gases continue to pour annually from U.S. automobiles and smokestacks into the atmosphere. Hopefully, Obama and Jackson will move forward quickly to address the looming perils laid out in today’s report. Otherwise, they risk looking like Mickey’s pals, Goofy and Minnie.