By EPW Blog ——Bio and Archives--February 8, 2011
Global Warming-Energy-Environment | CFP Comments | Reader Friendly | Subscribe | Email Us
"One point is clear: the potential regulation of greenhouse gases under any portion of the Clean Air Act could result in an unprecedented expansion of EPA authority that would have a profound effect on virtually every sector of the economy and touch every household in the land. "I believe the ANPR demonstrates the Clean Air Act, an outdated law originally enacted to control regional pollutants that cause direct health effects, is ill-suited for the task of regulating global greenhouse gases. Based on the analysis to date, pursuing this course of action would inevitably result in a very complicated, time-consuming and, likely, convoluted set of regulations."Notably, given these and other considerations, EPA ultimately decided not to issue an endangerment finding. The Obama EPA, however, ignored these concerns and issued a positive endangerment finding in December 2009. It is now dealing with the consequences: a regulatory morass that is stalling economic growth and keeping people unemployed-all for no meaningful impact on climate change. After months of deliberations, the Secretaries of Energy, Commerce, Agriculture and Transportation, among many other officials, expressed overwhelming opposition to EPA making a positive endangerment finding, noting the array of legal and practical complexities associated with regulating GHGs under the CAA, as well as the many unresolved technical and scientific issues involving climate change and its causes. Also, John Marburger, Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, wrote, "Anthropogenically driven climate impacts are in nearly every case indistinguishable from naturally occurring phenomena. The anthropogenic contribution is apparent primarily in retrospective statistical analyses, and its adverse impacts cannot be readily distinguished from impacts that would have occurred in the absence of anthropogenic warming." Here are excerpts from a letter sent from Susan Dudley, then head of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs at OMB to Stephen Johnson on EPA's draft ANPR, as well as excerpts of a letter from the Secretaries of Agriculture, DOE, Commerce, and Transportation to Dudley on same, both from July 2008:
View Comments
Inhofe EPW Press Blog