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EPA: Greenhouse gases a health threat
The AES Corporation's Alamitos natural gas-fired power station in Long Beach, Calif.
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Kai Ryssdal: The climate change spotlight for the next couple of weeks is going to be firmly on Copenhagen, Denmark. And when President Obama shows up at the big UN meeting in about 10 days or so, he is not going to have an American domestic climate-change bill to brag about. But today the Environmental Protection Agency gave him something he can at least point to: A formal finding that global warming gases endanger human health. From the Marketplace Sustainability Desk, Sarah Gardner reports.
LISA JACKSON: Today, I'm proud to announce that EPA has finalized its endangerment finding on greenhouse gas pollution and is now authorized and obligated to make reasonable efforts to reduce greenhouse pollutants under the Clean Air Act.
That's EPA chief Lisa Jackson. Her message is simple. If Congress isn't going to pass legislation to control global warming, her agency will regulate. That means limiting emissions from heat-trapping gases like carbon dioxide. But also methane, nitrous oxide, and a few trace gases you didn't learn in Chem 101 like "sulphur hexafluoride."
BRENDA EKWURZEL: Some of them have heat-trapping capacity that are thousands of times more than carbon dioxide.
Brenda Ekwurzel at the Union of Concerned Scientists says greenhouse gases come from dozens of sources. Power plants, steel mills, trucks, refrigerators, even cow poop.
But David Bookbinder, chief climate counsel for the Sierra Club, says the EPA will target only the biggest polluters. He expects the first thing the EPA will do is tighten tailpipe standards for automobiles. Later, he says the agency may even require coal-fired power plants to switch to a more climate friendly fossil fuel.
DAVID BOOKBINDER: Will EPA talk about natural gas as a control technology for CO2? And that is a very big question that EPA is wrestling with right now.
Of course, we may not get the answer anytime soon. Already some opponents of regulation say they'll file suit to stop the EPA.
I'm Sarah Gardner for Marketplace.
We almost drove into a tree, laughing so loud -- we certainly heard the word "cowpoop" in your report on Copenhagen and the global warming conference. It's gotta go down in the annals of "most uncanny remarks" -- what happened to cow-dung? Cows don't "poop" for gossake, babies, perhaps, but definitely not cows. Great listening to you Mr. Ryssdal & al! Cheers for the Season of . . . well whatever comes first, depending on your p.c. or some "sanitized" terminology that makes the world a cozier, harmless,and fuzzy place for us all! -Mizzi R.
If the EPA thinks it has the power to regulate something that's necessary for life as "pollution" under the Clean Air Act, how about regulating such notorious chemicals as oxygen, which is fatal in concentrations as small as one part per trillion and is a factor in all major fires, and dihydrogen monoxide (water), which is fatal when inhaled, a major component of acid rain, and itself a "greenhouse gas"?
CO2 is getting a bum rap! The EPA seeks more control (now over energy policy) rather than cleaner air.
And isn't the timing remarkable? Unable to get the people's representatives to make laws on CO2 emissions, and unable to get anything like a majority of the actual citizenry to agree that it is a problem, the current administration sinks to making it regulatable...by fiat. All on the first day of the Copenhagen conference!
Has the administration no shame? Did it learn nothing from the leaked emails from University of East Anglia revealing a conspiracy among the leading global warming proponents to hide contradictory climate data and suppress scientific dissent?
Shame on you, Mr. Obama. And shame on the media for not reporting the leak.
The whole man-made global warming thing's a sham, the result of bad science. Ask any credible climatologist.
Wake up, America; that giant sucking sound is the disappearance of your money and your freedoms.
Lisa Jackson stated, "a few trace gases you didn't learn in Chem 101 like "sulphur hexafluoride."
Speak for yourself. I am teaching CHEM 101 to 400 students here at UNC, Chapel Hill. Sulfur hexafluoride is relevant. In fact, it will probably be on the final examination.
Cheers,
Gary
ps "Sulphur" is the Queen's English. "Sulfur" is American English.
Lisa Jackson shouldn’t be “proud†to announce EPA finalizing a “finding on greenhouse gas pollution,†she should be ashamed. Announcing that CO2 is hazardous to human health is political correctness, not good science. One very real source of CO2 is the exhalation of human beings. Will EPA propose population control? Babies emit a whole bunch of noxious gases, maybe a tax on them? How far will they go? Dietary limits because utilizing food generates CO2, and other, gases, while simultaneously limiting exercising which makes humans use food faster?
Congress should rein in those clowns.
