08 December 2009
Health Threat Allows U.S. Agency to Regulate Greenhouse Gases
Scientists call for more comprehensive way to limit environmental emissions
Washington ― Greenhouse gases threaten the health and welfare of the American people, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced December 7 after resolving a 10-year dispute that went to the U.S. Supreme Court over the EPA’s authority to regulate carbon dioxide and other gases as pollutants under the Clean Air Act.
Announcement of the two-part finding ― that six greenhouse gases constitute air pollution and that emissions from new motor vehicles contribute to this pollution and ultimately to climate change ― came during the first day of the 2009 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, where 110 heads of state and 36,000 delegates and attendees will decide when and how the citizens of planet Earth will deal with a changing climate.
“Today’s announcement on its own does not impose any new requirements on industry,” EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson said at a briefing in Washington, but it is “the prerequisite for strong new emissions standards for cars and trucks.”
The EPA issued the proposed findings in April and held a 60-day public-comment period. The agency received more than 380,000 comments that it reviewed and considered as it finalized its findings. The gases are carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, hydrofluorocarbons, perfluorocarbons and sulfur hexafluoride.
In September, the EPA and the U.S. Department of Transportation proposed the new carbon dioxide emissions standards for model year 2012–2016 “light duty” vehicles, including cars, sport utility vehicles, minivans, personal pickup trucks and passenger vans. The agencies proposed the standards in response to President Obama’s call in May for a more aggressive national fuel-efficiency policy.
Road vehicles contribute more than 23 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. The EPA’s proposed standards for the light-duty vehicles, responsible for nearly 60 percent of all U.S. transportation-related emissions, would reduce emissions by nearly 950 million metric tons and conserve 1.8 billion barrels of oil over the vehicles’ lifetimes.
LONG, WINDING ROAD
Now that the EPA has determined such emissions endanger health, the environment agency and the Department of Transportation can finalize the proposed light-duty standards.
The decision is timely given the global focus on greenhouse gases, but the story really began in October 1999, when the nonprofit International Center for Technology Assessment (ICTA) and 18 other organizations filed a petition asking the EPA to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from new motor vehicles under the Clean Air Act, the law that defines the EPA’s responsibilities for protecting U.S. air quality.
The EPA denied the petition in 2003, saying the Clean Air Act did not authorize the agency to regulate for the purpose of mitigating climate change. In response, ICTA, 13 environmental organizations and 15 U.S. states, territories and municipalities filed petitions asking the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington to review the EPA decision. The court upheld the EPA decision and the case made its way to the Supreme Court as Massachusetts versus EPA.
In 2007, in a 5-to-4 decision, the court ruled in favor of Massachusetts and the other petitioners, finding that the EPA had the authority to regulate carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases and holding that the EPA’s denial of the petition was “arbitrary and capricious.” The court also ruled that the EPA could avoid regulating greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act only if the agency determined that greenhouse gases do not contribute to climate change. Two years later, the agency has found that greenhouse gases do endanger public health and contribute to climate change.
BACKUP PLAN
The EPA’s finding covers emissions that have been the subject of scrutiny and intense analysis for decades by scientists around the world. But not everyone thinks a regulatory approach is the best way to deal with greenhouse gas emissions.
“My reaction and I think the reaction of many is that EPA is doing this with a legal basis but this is not the right way to approach global climate change,” Kevin Trenberth, head of the Climate Analysis Section at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado and a lead author of the assessments produced by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, told America.gov. “It’s not broad-based enough and it hasn’t got the right tools of incentives as well as penalties. It’s very focused on emissions and … it doesn’t deal at all with adaptation issues.”
“In an ideal world, Congress would already have passed a climate and clean energy bill,” Ron Burke, director of the Union of Concerned Scientists’ Midwest office, who testified at one of the EPA’s public hearings on the topic, said in a November statement. “Unfortunately that hasn’t happened yet and the planet won’t wait. That’s why it’s critical for EPA to address this problem in the meantime as a back-up plan in the event Congress doesn’t get the job done.”
The EPA said President Obama and Jackson have stated publicly that they support a legislative solution to the problem of climate change and Congress’ efforts to pass comprehensive climate legislation.
“The carbon dioxide emissions problem is global, so really it needs to be dealt with in this international framework that’s going on in Copenhagen,” Trenberth added. “It should not be done on an industry-by-industry or country-by-country basis because that tends to encourage industry to move to a country that hasn’t implemented any changes.”
Learn more about the EPA’s finding at the agency’s Web site.
Learn more about this and other climate change topics at the America.gov Adaptation! blog, and join the conversation at our Facebook page.
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