The EPA will rule in mid-April that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases “endanger” public welfare and health, but will stop short of proposing new greenhouse-gas regulations, Greenwire reports, citing a leaked EPA Power Point timeline of the agency’s deliberations.
The internal EPA draft document Greenwire cites shows that the EPA is working to present a final “endangerment” finding for Ms. Jackson to sign April 16. A “senior official” in the Obama administration told Dow Jones Newswires the EPA is “moving forward aggressively” to rule that greenhouse gases are a threat to public health.
Since the nomination of new administrator Lisa Jackson, the EPA has been expected to rule that greenhouse gases are a threat to public health because of their role in climate change and all its assorted maladies and need to be regulated. That has environmentalists thrilled and business groups worried.
Right now, it looks like the EPA still wants to pass the climate-regulating buck to Congress and its prospective cap-and-trade bill, rather than taking on the massive task of regulating economy-wide greenhouse-gas emissions using the Clean Air Act.
In the leaked memo, the environmental agency proposed a “stand alone” solution to the problem: “EPA proposes to address all elements of the endangerment finding [for Sec. 202]
without simultaneously proposing GHG standards.”
But once the EPA rules that greenhouse-gas emissions are a danger, somebody has to regulate them, in the wake of a 2007 Supreme Court case on the matter. This might be just what President Obama needs to convince cap-and-trade skeptics on the Hill to play ball with his $650 billion climate plan.