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Bush and EPA fire final salvo on climate change

Published by MAC on 2008-07-20

U.S. EPA Chills Progress Towards Regulating Greenhouse Gases

By J.R. Pegg

WASHINGTON, DC, (ENS)

11th July 2008

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.

The high court ruling required EPA to reconsider its refusal to determine whether greenhouse gas emissions from motor vehicles endanger public health.

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.

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.

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.


US Lawmakers Say EPA to Delay Action on Climate

PlanetArk US

14th July 2008

NEW YORK - US lawmakers said the Bush administration will reveal it will not take measures to tackle greenhouse gas emissions while the president is in office in a proposal by environmental regulators to be announced Friday.

EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson will hold a press conference later Friday in which he will release a long-awaited advanced notice of proposed rule-making on greenhouse gases.

The EPA has been under pressure since a landmark 2007 ruling by the Supreme Court that federal pollution laws protecting human health force the agency to reconsider its refusal to regulate carbon dioxide emissions from new cars and trucks.

Lawmakers who saw drafts of the EPA's advanced notice said the agency will delay rule-making with long comment periods until President Bush leaves office in January 2009.

"After more than seven years, this administration is still not willing to make the hard choices to confront global warming," Sen. Tom Carper, a Delaware Democrat and chairman of the Senate Subcommittee on Clean Air and Nuclear Safety, said in a release.

"All signs point to the fact the Bush administration will leave greenhouse regulation to the next president," an aide to a lawmaker in the House said by telephone.

Sen. Olympia Snowe, a Maine Republican, said in a release, "The deliberate efforts to delay adherence to the Supreme Court's decision is reckless and irresponsible."

EPA spokesman Tim Lyons said the EPA's proposed rule-making that will be revealed later in the day is not a delay because acting on climate change "takes a lot of time, thought and analysis," without going into more details.

The EPA's delay is a win for some car-makers, electric utilities and oil refiners as it gives them time to prepare for changes in their products and plants to reduce emissions that could cost them billions of dollars.

Both presidential candidates say they support regulating carbon dioxide and other gases blamed for warming the planet. (Reporting by Timothy Gardner in New York and Tom Doggett in Washington; Editing by Christian Wiessner)

REUTERS NEWS SERVICE


EPA Says Climate Rules Are the Job of US Congress

PlanetArk US

14th July 2008

NEW YORK - The top US environmental regulator Friday declined to take steps to regulate planet-warming emissions under existing pollution laws despite a Supreme Court decision that has pressured his agency to act.

Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Stephen Johnson said Congress should make rules to regulate emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases blamed for global warming.

US lawmakers said the move means the Bush administration has saddled the next president with the responsibility of rule making. A proposed US climate bill died last month in the Senate.

Last year's Massachusetts v. EPA Supreme Court ruling had found that greenhouse gases can be regulated under the US Clean Air Act. The decision pressured the EPA to reconsider its refusal to regulate carbon dioxide emissions from new cars and trucks.

But instead of laying out rules, Johnson solicited public comments for a 120-day period on a nearly 1,000 page draft on the effects of climate change and the ramifications of the Clean Air Act on greenhouse emissions.

"If the nation is serious about regulating greenhouse gases, the Clean Air Act is the wrong tool for the job and it's really at the feet of Congress to come up with good legislation that cuts through what will likely be decades of regulation and litigation," Johnson told reporters in a teleconference.

The White House said in a statement that the "onerous command-and-control regulation contemplated in the EPA staff draft would impose crippling costs on the economy in the form of a massive hidden tax, without even ensuring that the intended overall emissions reductions occur."

Johnson's call for a new comment period, on top of other such periods, comes as the EPA had been making progress on rule making. In March, the EPA started writing regulations for emissions from cars and stationary sources like power plants.

But Friday Johnson said Congress could make rules faster than the agency.

He said the time it would take to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act and would be akin to walking across the entire country, while getting Congress to make rules would be like traveling on a supersonic jet.

DUCKING RESPONSIBILITY

Environmentalists and lawmakers said the EPA's move Friday was the latest instance of pressure by the Bush administration on the agency to delay action on climate.

Senate Democrat Barbara Boxer said "despite the Supreme Court's finding that EPA was ducking its responsibility under the law to control global warming emissions, the Bush administration continues to block all action."

Earlier in the week Boxer accused the Bush administration of a "cover-up" aimed at stopping the EPA from tackling greenhouse gas emissions by editing testimony on global warming last year.

A White House spokesman said at the time that government offices normally review initiatives for inaccuracies.

Frank O'Donnell, the president of nonprofit group Clean Air Watch, said the White House has turned the EPA process "into a road map to nowhere."

Sen. Olympia Snowe, a Maine Republican, said "the deliberate efforts to delay adherence to the Supreme Court's decision are reckless and irresponsible,"

The delay gives some car-makers, electric utilities and oil refiners time to prepare for changes in their products and plants that could cost them billions of dollars.

The Alliance of Automobile Makers said the Clean Air Act "does not include all of the tools and criteria needed to address the global issue of climate change, including requirements to balance the economic effects and impacts on US manufacturing jobs along with the environmental considerations."

Both US presidential candidates say they support regulating greenhouse gases with the help of market mechanisms such as cap and trade. (Additional reporting by Tom Doggett in Washington; Editing by Christian Wiessner)

Story by Timothy Gardner

REUTERS NEWS SERVICE


Draft EPA Study Links Global Warming to More Smog

PlanetArk US

14th July 2008

NEW YORK - US environmental regulators quietly published a draft study on Thursday that linked global warming to higher levels of smog that could harm human health, a report green groups said stood in contrast to the Bush Administration's slow movement on climate change.

The draft report published by the Environmental Protection Agency in the Federal Register said, "Climate change has the potential to produce significant increases in near-surface (ozone) concentrations in many areas of the US"

It said parts of the Mid-Atlantic, Northeast and lower Midwest show some increases in ozone in study simulations, and the seasons in which ozone is a problem could last longer as a result of higher temperatures.

Ozone smog endangers the health of people, especially the young, old and those with respiratory problems.

"This report addresses the fundamental question that global warming is a threat to public health," said Frank O'Donnell, president of the nonprofit group Clean Air Watch.

"It stands in sharp contrast to the Bush administration's foot-dragging political approach," on regulating man-made emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases blamed for warming the planet, he said.

A White House spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for an interview about the draft study.

Earlier this week, leading Senate Democrat Barbara Boxer accused the Bush Administration of a "cover-up" aimed at stopping the EPA from tackling greenhouse emissions.

Jason Burnett, the agency's former associate deputy administrator who resigned last month, accused Vice President Dick Cheney's office of pressuring the EPA to remove references to the human health consequences of climate change in testimony for delivery to Boxer's Environment and Public Works Committee last year.

The EPA has been under pressure since a landmark 2007 ruling by the Supreme Court that it must reconsider its refusal to regulate carbon dioxide emissions from new cars and trucks.

In March, it started the long process of writing regulations for emissions from both cars and stationary sources like power plants.

EPA administrator Stephen Johnson is slated to hold a press conference on Friday on proposed rulemaking on greenhouse gases.

The EPA said Thursday's draft study does not represent agency policy "at this stage" and announced a 45-day public comment period on the draft ending on August 25.

(Reporting by Timothy Gardner, editing by Todd Eastham)

REUTERS NEWS SERVICE

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