This is a big deal: the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency just issued a proposed finding that climate-warming emissions pose a threat to public health and welfare.
This is actually the culmination of a process that began under the Bush administration:
President Obama’s EPA inherited the global warming review following an April 2007 Supreme Court decision that ordered the Bush administration to reconsider whether greenhouse gas emissions are pollutants subject to regulation under the Clean Air Act.
EPA’s finding just a first step, but it’s an important one, since it signals that the agency could be starting down the path towards putting some real limits on climate-warming emissions. And action by a federal agency could ratchet up the pressure on Congress to take action: no doubt, they’ll want to put their stamp on climate policy, independent of what EPA staffers think is best.
And this increased pressure on Congress, in turn, amps up the pressure on state legislators to take action sooner rather than later. That’s especially true, since the states that are farthest along in designing smart climate policy have every reason to get a stake in the ground before the coal-heavy states start trying to tilt a national program in their favor.
I don’ t know if EPA’s action is a game-changer, really, since it was long expected. But even though it’s just a preliminary finding on a somewhat technical matter, the political repercussions could be far-reaching. Stay tuned.
Matt
One of only two public hearings (in the Country) on EPA’s GHG Endangerment Finding will occur in Seattle! The hearing is scheduled for May 21st. You can sign up to make a public statement, on a first registered basis.http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/endangerment.html
NW Libertarian
This is the problem w/gov, they lag the science. Looking at the data, the earth stopped warming after ’98 and started cooling about ’05 and is certainly cooling now. This when CO2 output has increased and the AGW model says that we should be heating up w/ the CO2 output. Thus the data has disproved that aspect of AGW. Gov should stay out of science and stick to political issues. I have yet to see the justification that CO2 is harmful to humans, just this general explaination. Certainly if a human is in a room w/more than 5,000PPM (300PPM is ave air concentration) there could be brain damage, coma or death. The only justification is that they are using an old report that says CO2 causes Global warming that causes other things that cause death. Kind of slim. They assume more storms, but that occurs w/ cooling, w/ warming -more uniform temps = less storms. Warming historically has been good for humans. The Earth is not a static system, it’s more of a living thing, as CO2 increases, it is absorbed by the oceans, and living things. W/ more CO2 there will probably be less starvation as plants grow better. Here’s a link to a bit more infohttp://brokencontrollers.com/epa-rules-co2-as-harmful-to-humans-t2190906.php