U.S. EPA Chills Progress Towards Regulating Greenhouse Gases

WASHINGTON, DC, July 11, 2008 (ENS) - The Bush administration today asked for public comment on a long list of options for controlling greenhouse gas emissions under existing federal law, but emphasized that it has no intention of pursuing any of them.

The announcement confirms that the Bush administration will not move to regulate greenhouse gas emissions and will pass this concern on to the next president and to Congress.

The advanced notice of proposed rulemaking released today by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is the agency's response to the landmark Supreme Court decision in April 2007 that gave the EPA authority under the Clean Air Act to regulate carbon dioxide - the predominant greenhouse gas - as a pollutant.

Traffic jam in Boston, Massachusetts (Photo by Kiran Reddy)

An "endangerment" finding would require the EPA to take action to regulate and limit emissions under the Clean Air Act.

But the Bush administration has effectively sidestepped the question and rejected the idea of using the Clean Air Act to regulate emissions.

The massive document contains some 1,000 pages of internal agency deliberations as well as comments from other agencies largely focused on whether the Clean Air Act is suitable to regulate greenhouse gases from a range of sources, including power plants and motor vehicles.

EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson said the complex document underscores his determination that the Clean Air Act is simply "ill-suited" for the task.

"It is the wrong tool," Johnson told reporters on a press call.

The potential regulation of greenhouse gases "under any portion of the Clean Air Act could result in an unprecedented expansion of EPA's authority that could have a profound effect on virtually every sector of the economy and every household," Johnson said.

If EPA were to use the law to require cuts in emissions, the agency would be forced to take a piecemeal approach, he said.

The result would be scores of individual regulations that would take decades to craft, all of which would be subject to litigation and delay, Johnson explained.

"If our nation is truly serious about regulating greenhouse gases, the Clean Air Act is the wrong tool for the job," said Johnson. "It really is at the feet of Congress."

But Congress has thus far shown little appetite for the job. The Senate's attempt to consider legislation dissolved last month in a wave of partisan bickering and the House is unlikely to take up a bill this year.

Johnson's announcement is a reversal of earlier conclusions by EPA staff who had determined that the Clean Air Act indeed provided an adequate and workable framework for regulating greenhouse gas emissions. A December 2007 draft by the agency went so far as to conclude that greenhouse gases from motor vehicles do endanger public welfare.

Subsequent drafts leaked in May and released by the agency last month did not include an endangerment finding, but did include the final document's focus on the view that the Clean Air Act is unworkable and too costly.

Traffic on the streets of Chicago, Illinois (Photo by Ian Britton courtesy FreeFoto.com)

The final version contains assumptions that gasoline prices will be some $2 per gallon and that oil will cost $58 a barrel - far lower than the current national U.S. average of more than $4 a gallon and than current oil prices of some $140 a barrel.

These assumptions result in an estimate that cutting greenhouse gases from motor vehicles would result in net benefits of some $830 billion. Previous EPA estimates found net benefits could total some $2 trillion.

"The White House has taken an earnest attempt by their own climate experts to respond to the Supreme Court's mandate to address global warming pollution, and turned it into a Frankenstein's monster," said Representative Ed Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat and chair of the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming.

EPA's announcement also comes on the heels of new revelations the administration has sought to manipulate agency staff and other federal officials to stall action on greenhouse gas emissions.

Earlier this week, EPA's former top climate advisor said the White House ignored an email sent last December than contained the agency's draft endangerment finding, effectively leaving the issue in limbo.

The White House and the Vice President's office also pressured federal health and environmental officials to edit congressional testimony to downplay the public health impacts of climate change, according to allegations put forth this week by Jason Burnett, who resigned in protest last month from EPA.

Traffic in Sacramento, California (Photo by Ian Britton courtesy FreeFoto.com)

Senate Environment and Public Works Chairwoman Barbara Boxer has already pledged hearings on the controversy and reacted with disdain at today's announcement by EPA.

"We now know that top scientists have found that global warming presents a threat to the health and safety of the American people and that the Clean Air Act gives EPA the tools to protect the public," the California Democrat said. "Special moneyed interests weighed in and lo and behold, today the Bush administration has essentially ordered EPA to do nothing."

Boxer added that the announcement undermines Bush's recent pledge that the United States would join other wealthy nations in seeking to cut emissions 50 percent by 2050.

"He meant none of it," Boxer said.

Environmentalists reacted with similar ire.

"Today's action caps off eight years of catastrophic negligence on the part of an increasingly irrelevant administration, and removes whatever shadow of a doubt that may have existed about whether it was going to fail to live up to its obligations to the American public, the law, and the Supreme Court to do something real on global warming," said David Bookbinder, chief climate counsel for the Sierra Club.

Others looked for a silver lining, noting that the document does confirm EPA's authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions through a variety of means, including a cap-and-trade program.

Furthermore, both likely presidential candidates, Arizona Republican Senator John McCain and Illinois Democratic Senator Barack Obama, have called for mandatory reductions in U.S. greenhouse gas emissions.

"It's up to the next president, regardless of party, to move forward where this administration has denied the science and defied the law," said Steve Cochran, director of the National Climate Campaign at the Environmental Defense Fund.

Copyright Environment News Service (ENS) 2008. All rights reserved.