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EPA Endangerment Finding
Posted by Walt Vernon on December 07, 2009 at 7:48pm
When most people think about Climate Change Law, they think about Cap and Trade, because these are the “big words” mostly thrown about in the popular press. The reality, though, is that Climate Change Law takes many many forms, and continues to evolve at international, national, regional, state, and local levels in very different ways.
One strand of climate change law occurring at the Federal Level has to do with the EPA’s ability to regulate Greenhouse Gasses independently of the work that Congress is doing. That is, the EPA already has jurisdiction to regulate gasses which may reasonably be anticipated to endanger public health or welfare.
Today, December 7, 2009, 60 days and 380,000 public comments after issuing its draft Endangerment finding, the EPA Administrator issued an Endangerment finding. They have determined that six gasses, the same six regulated by the Kyoto accords as Greenhouse Gasses, threaten the public health and welfare of current and future generations.
I am certain that it is no coincidence that this finding comes as the Copenhagen round of international climate change talks gets started. There was some talk by Republicans that the recent email furor over the way the IPCC scientists handled dissenting scientific views would derail Congress’ attempts to regulate these gasses, and maybe even require the EPA to rethink its draft finding. This announcement today shows that the EPA has conclusively determined that the science is conclusive, and that it must act. President Obama wanted some kind of Congressional action on Climate Change before he went to Copenhagen to show the world that the U.S. was serious about this issue. This statement by the EPA is a close second, and paves the way for future regulation, should Congress fail to act.
We will explore, in future posts, how these kinds of regulations are likely to affect healthcare, and other kinds of building owners.
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By Susan Cronk on December 10, 2009
I’m so glad to know the EPA has the power—and is starting to use it—to side step all the politics around climate change and take real action based on science. I will be interested to see next steps as a result of the EPA ruling.
BTW - great new M+NLB website!