The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Monday announced that greenhouse gases (GHGs) threaten the public health and welfare of the American people. The finding completes the groundwork required under the Clean Air Act for the EPA to regulate the nations GHG emissions.
EPA also found that GHG emissions from on-road vehicles contribute to that threat.
The announcement was timed to coincide with the start of the United Nations climate change conference in Copenhagen. The Obama administration hoped to have climate change legislation in hand by now, but Senate Democrats failed to rally enough support and the ongoing debate on healthcare has tied up the legislative process in Washington.
The Obama administration reiterated that it prefers a legislative solution to climate change, but will move ahead with EPA regulations if Congress fails to act. Monday’s announcement signals to the world and to lawmakers in Washington specifically that the administration intends to follow through on this threat/promise.
Twenty congressional Republicans, including the top House GOP leadership, sent President Obama a letter on Friday reminding him that Congress has the sole responsibility of approving a mandatory emissions reduction program, and expressing "grave concern" that the U.S. delegation to Copenhagen will commit the nation to a global treaty. (Washington Post coverage)
Concerning the EPA announcement, environmental groups were pleased:
"As the major global warming summit begins this week in Copenhagen, this announcement couldn’t come at a more important time. The Obama administration has followed through on its pledge to act and is demonstrating that the U.S. has turned away from eight years of inaction under the Bush administration," said Carl Pope, Executive Director of Sierra Club.
Emily Figdor of Environment America said: "This is the most significant step the federal government has taken on global warming. The stage is now set for EPA to hold the biggest global warming polluters accountable. The Senate also must act to set overall pollution-reduction goals and to accelerate the move to clean energy, but it’s up to EPA to crack down on pollution from cars and mega industrial polluters, like coal-fired power plants."
The American Petroleum Institute’s response was also predictable: "This action poses a threat to every American family and business if it leads to regulation of greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act. Such regulation would be intrusive, inefficient, and excessively costly," said Jack Gerard, president of API.
EPA’s final findings respond to the 2007 U.S. Supreme Court decision
that GHGs fit within the Clean Air Act definition of air pollutants.
The findings do not in and of themselves impose any emission reduction
requirements but rather allow EPA to finalize the GHG standards
proposed earlier this year for new light-duty vehicles as part of the
joint rulemaking with the Department of Transportation.
“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,” said EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson.
On-road vehicles contribute more than 23% of total U.S. GHG emissions. EPA’s proposed GHG standards for light-duty vehicles, a subset of on-road vehicles, would reduce GHG emissions by nearly 950 million metric tons and conserve 1.8 billion barrels of oil over the lifetime of model year 2012-2016 vehicles.
EPA’s endangerment finding covers emissions of six key greenhouse gases–carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, hydrofluorocarbons, perfluorocarbons and sulfur hexafluoride – that have been the subject of scrutiny and intense analysis for decades by scientists in the United States and around the world.
Scientific consensus shows that as a result of human activities, GHG concentrations in the atmosphere are at record high levels and data shows that the Earth has been warming over the past 100 years, with the steepest increase in warming in recent decades. The evidence of human-induced climate change goes beyond observed increases in average surface temperatures; it includes melting ice in the Arctic, melting glaciers around the world, increasing ocean temperatures, rising sea levels, acidification of the oceans due to excess carbon dioxide, changing precipitation patterns, and changing patterns of ecosystems and wildlife.
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